Photos: FRANKENSTEIN to Open Richmond Shakespeare Season 28

Richmond Shakespeare launches its Season 28 this October with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, David Catlin’s bold and highly theatrical adaptation of one of the most enduring stories ever written. Directed by Foster Solomon, the production opens Friday, October 9 at Virginia Rep’s intimate Theatre Gym and runs through November 1. Special performances include a $25 preview Thursday October 8 at 7:30p, a pay-what-you-will in partnership with CultureWorks Saturday October 10 at 3p, and an audio description performance in partnership with Virginia Voice Sunday October 18 at 2p.

More than two centuries after Mary Shelley first introduced the world to Victor Frankenstein and his Creature, Frankenstein remains a haunting exploration of ambition, creation, responsibility, isolation, and what it means to be human.

Catlin’s adaptation brings Shelley herself into the heart of her legendary tale. On a stormy night, Mary begins to tell a ghost story—and conjures a world in which Victor Frankenstein pursues the impossible and brings life to a creature assembled from the dead. Creator and creation soon become locked in a devastating struggle with consequences neither could have imagined.

Directed by Foster Solomon, Richmond Shakespeare’s production embraces the inventive physicality and theatricality of Catlin’s adaptation, transforming the intimate Theatre Gym into a world of shadow, science, memory, and imagination.

“Frankenstein feels like the perfect story to begin this next chapter for Richmond Shakespeare,” said Jase Smith Sullivan, Managing Director of Richmond Shakespeare. “At its heart, it asks deeply human questions about what we create, what we owe to the things we bring into the world, and whether any of us can escape the consequences of our choices. David Catlin’s adaptation is thrilling because it doesn’t simply retell the story audiences think they know—it brings Mary Shelley into the room and allows us to watch her imagination create this extraordinary world right in front of us.”

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein also launches Richmond Shakespeare’s 2026–2027 season, MADE & REMADE: Stories of Creation, Transformation & Reinvention, a season exploring the people, relationships, worlds, and works of art we create—and the ways those creations transform us in return.

The production features an ensemble of actors inhabiting Mary Shelley’s world and the many characters of her imagination, using movement, storytelling, and theatrical invention to bring the epic scope of Shelley’s novel into the intimacy of live performance.

Presented at Virginia Rep’s Theatre Gym, Frankenstein places audiences just feet from the action, creating an immediate theatrical experience particularly suited to Catlin’s visceral reimagining of Shelley’s classic.

Photo Credit: Aaron Sutten