BWW Backstage: FRANKENSTEIN at Denver Center For The Performing Arts

These days, "horror" has come to mean over-the-top creepy special effects, or a gruesome monster startling the audience by suddenly jumping out at a victim.

But not Denver Center's new production of Frankenstein.

This North American debut, directed by Tony nominee Sam Buntrock, is an intellectual and emotional horror show. It frightens because Frankenstein and his creation challenge our assumptions about the nature of control and life itself.

Mr. Buntrock explains. "It takes the audience on an unexpected journey. It allows man to meet god and man to be god, and it's essentially about a man who recreates life, who breaks the secret of human life, who himself doesn't really understand what life is. So there is that central irony in the middle of it."

Co-lead actor Mark Junek agrees. "I think there is the horror aspect of creating something and it coming out of your control, and it is a metaphor for parenting. I think it speaks to not just our base understanding of having relationships, (but to) ask questions like why am I poor, why do people treat me different, why do people judge me by how I look?"

Frankenstein explores duality -- control and powerlessness; creator and creation; life and death. And the production takes this a step further in a unique way -- the two lead actors alternate the roles of Frankenstein and the monster from performance to performance. "What I realized about doing this play is, it's like a director and you have to know every second as an actor. We are basically in every scene as two different characters. That gives me much more, and to make more choices and to relate a little more than if I was playing one of them," says Sullivan Jones, co-lead actor.

Mr. Junek describes his creature in this way: "He has been made of composite dead body parts that have been animated by electricity and has stitches everywhere and...he has yellow eyes. (But) he is fast, he is agile, he is graceful, he is strong, he is articulate. He asks all the right questions. He questions everything, which is the most terrifying thing."

This Frankenstein unnerves us in a deeper, more complex way. As Bruce Springsteen concluded in Brilliant Disguise, "God have mercy on the man who doubts what he's sure of."

Watch a video preview with backstage footage and interviews here.

Frankenstein plays at the Denver Center from September 30th to October 30th. For tickets, go to denvercenter.org or call 1-800-621-1222.