For two nights in October, a unique multimedia performance of Mary Shelley’s literary masterpiece — an interactive trip through its world, with Madeline Smith reading extracts from her text and a new original soundtrack performed live to picture by Jason Frederick.
An interactive visual, music and effects night at the Circle & Star.
Frankenstein does not warn us against invention, but against invention without responsibility.
In 2026, its lesson is urgent: our power to create is advancing faster than our wisdom to govern.
The modern Promethean question is not only what we can make, but how we will care for what follows.
Frankenstein — Unchained is a new interpretation of the original: narrated live, scored live to picture, and given back its voice. Dark Matters, our modern-gothic season, begins here.
Classic horror icon Madeline Smith has been inside this story before.
In 1974 she played Sarah — “Angel” — in Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell. It was the sixth and last of Hammer’s Frankenstein films, Peter Cushing’s sixth and final turn as the Baron, and Terence Fisher’s last film as a director. The creature was played by David Prowse, who would go on to be the body of Darth Vader.
Her part was a girl who could not speak.
Fifty-two years on, she is your guide — reading extracts from Mary Shelley’s text, live, and guiding a room of fifty-five through the evening.
She appeared in Hammer’s The Vampire Lovers with Ingrid Pitt, and in Taste the Blood of Dracula. She was Rosemary in Theatre of Blood with Vincent Price, and Miss Caruso in Live and Let Die — Roger Moore’s first Bond. On stage she played Felicity Rumpers in Alan Bennett’s Habeas Corpus at the Lyric, opposite Alec Guinness.
An acting masterclass that gripped the whole audience.London Unattached · October 2025
Jason Frederick scores classic horror to picture for a living.
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. White Zombie. The Vampire Bat. The Fall of the House of Usher — all played against the film. For Jekyll he built the sound out of steam irons and radio static, to get something scratchy and dusty enough to sit under it.
He studied film scoring at the University of Southern California under Christopher Young, David Raksin and Elmer Bernstein — the men who wrote Laura and To Kill a Mockingbird. A Canadian multi-instrumentalist, now based in England, he has recorded with Billy Preston and Will Young.
Here he performs a new original soundtrack, live to picture and in real time — at the keyboard, and with a bow drawn across an electric guitar — to underline and support the story as it goes.
An interactive trip through the world of the story.
- An atmospheric, interactive journey through Mary Shelley’s classic 1818 gothic novel.
- Madeline Smith reads extracts from Mary Shelley’s text, live in the room, and guides the evening through.
- A new original soundtrack, performed live to picture by Jason Frederick — in real time, to underline and support the story.
- The visuals are there to bring the music alive — projection, lighting and smoke moving with it, in a room of fifty-five.
In the first weeks of 1817, with Frankenstein still unfinished, Mary Shelley spent part of the winter in Hampstead, staying with Leigh and Marianne Hunt. That spring, after completing the novel, the Shelleys began searching for a publisher. Two hundred and nine years later, the book comes back up the hill.
Outside our door lies Hampstead Heath, named explicitly in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
It’s time for our story to continue…
The story asks what a maker owes the thing they made.
Here is one small answer. Scott Neilson painted the creature for us, and it has been printed as a limited edition on museum-archival paper with vibrant inks — signed by the artist, numbered by hand.
Profit from every print goes to nurses, and to local organisations supporting cancer patients and their families.
One for every seat in the room, and then no more. Add a print to your booking, or collect it at the box office on the night.
Circle & Star, Hampstead
28 Heath Street, London NW3 6TE. Hampstead Station · Northern Line — thirty seconds from the door. Fifty-five seats, and the smoke reaches the back row.