Interview: Matt Conner On Directing the 10th Anniversary Revival of MONSTERS OF THE VILLA DIODATI at Creative Cauldron

Creative Cauldron is bringing back MONSTERS OF THE VILLA DIODATI, the musical by Helen Hayes Award winners Matt Conner and Stephen Gregory Smith, ten years after its 2016 world premiere. The second installment in Creative Cauldron’s Bold New Works for Intimate Stages initiative, a five-year commissioning project launched in 2015 under founding Artistic Director Laura Connors Hull, the musical is rooted in the legendary “summer of darkness” of 1816, when Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Claire Clairmont, and Dr. John Polidori gathered at the Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva. Challenged to write ghost stories, Mary conceived the idea that became FRANKENSTEIN, while Polidori’s contribution would eventually become THE VAMPYRE.

The revival bridges the original production and its new incarnation. Helen Hayes Award nominee Susan Derry returns as Mary Shelley, a decade after originating the role, while Helen Hayes Award winner David Landstrom, a member of the original company, returns in the entirely different role of Lord Byron. They are joined by Rachel Cahoon as Claire Clairmont, Ben Ribler as Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Alan Gutierrez-Urista as Dr. John Polidori, with original music director Garrett Jones returning to the piece.

Conner, who has been performing, composing, teaching, and directing in the DC area for 25 years, directs the revival. His commissioned works include NEVERMORE, PARTIAL ECLIPSE, and THE SILVER BELLES at Signature Theatre, and he received the Helen Hayes Award for Best Direction for Disney’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST at Creative Cauldron. BroadwayWorld spoke with Conner about why now felt like the right moment to return to the villa, how the world has changed around the material, and the grandeur a new space finally allows.

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What drew you back to MONSTERS OF THE VILLA DIODATI after ten years, and what made this the right moment for a remount?

People have been asking us to bring it back for years. We would hear, “MONSTERS was my favorite. When are you doing it again?” That stayed with us. With the tenth anniversary of the original production arriving during an anniversary season for Creative Cauldron, it felt like the right time to revisit an audience favorite. We also have a new space that allows us to imagine the villa on a different scale. There was an opportunity to bring back something people loved and give them a new experience of it.

How has your perspective on the material changed now that you’re directing it a decade after composing it?

The world around the show has changed, and certain lines resonate differently now. We’re living with AI and this feeling that a new technology is moving forward faster than we understand its consequences. I remember people saying, “Don’t stand too close to the microwave.” There’s always been anxiety around new technology, but this feels more consequential. We didn’t write the show about AI, and I don’t think it needs to become a show about AI. But audiences bring their own world into the theatre. Something in the text can feel startlingly current without our having to underline it.

What specific changes or expansions did you make to the show for this new production, both musically and in terms of the story itself?

The revisions have been selective. We’ve added and cut a few lines, added a new prologue, and updated the epilogue. Even since our New York production in 2024, there’s been more Frankenstein culture to account for. That’s part of what makes the epilogue interesting: the story’s life keeps extending beyond the people who created it. In approaching the score, I’m also listening to how it works within this production, how the music carries the relationships, the atmosphere, and the movement of the story. The larger space gives us room to expand the visual world around it.

What was it like being the composer revisiting your own work as a director with ten years of additional experience?

It’s an interesting experience because you remember the impulse behind the music, but you also have to listen to what’s happening in the room now. As the composer, I know what I hoped a moment would communicate. As the director, I have to ask whether that’s actually coming through. Ten years gives you some distance. You can hear something familiar and discover a different emphasis, especially when actors bring their own understanding to it. I want to leave room for those discoveries. That’s one of the pleasures of returning to a piece: it can still surprise you.

You’ve mentioned that Frankenstein’s Creature can be read as a metaphor for invention outrunning responsibility. How did that idea inform your directorial choices this time?

For me, that idea connects to the Creature continuing to walk forward into the future, beyond the horizon of what its creator could have imagined. More than two hundred years later, it’s still moving through our culture. We’ve just had another Frankenstein film nominated for Best Picture. Mary Shelley couldn’t possibly have anticipated all the forms her creation would take. That informs how I approach the story’s ending and its sense of what continues beyond these characters. They’re living through something whose consequences they cannot fully see. I want to leave audiences with that feeling, and let them make their own connections to the world we’re living in now.

How does directing in Creative Cauldron’s intimate space influence the way you approach the storytelling and staging of this particular musical?

The closeness is wonderful for this story. These people are confined together, watching one another, provoking one another, keeping secrets. When the audience is close, a glance or a small shift in someone’s attention can carry a great deal. The new space also gives us height and a sense of grandeur we couldn’t achieve before. We have a two-level set and multiple chandeliers. We didn’t even have one chandelier in the original production! It feels much more like we’re inhabiting the villa now. We can create that larger world while keeping the audience close to the people inside it.

What do you hope audiences who saw the original 2016 production take away from seeing this new version?

I hope they feel the excitement of returning to something they remember, while discovering how differently it can speak to them ten years later. When The Washington Post reviewed the original production, one observation was that it was missing some grandeur. That stayed with us. This time, the taller space, the levels, and those chandeliers give us a much stronger sense of the villa. I hope returning audiences enjoy that expanded world and hear new resonances in the material presented with this amazing cast: Susan Derry (Mary Shelley), David Landstrom (Lord Byron), Ben Ribler (Percy Shelley), Rachel Cahoon (Claire Clairmont), and Alan Gutierrez-Urista (John Polidori). They’ve lived another ten years, too. They may recognize the show and find that a different moment stays with them this time.

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