Shay Mace
Witness the untold story of Giovanni Aldini, the real life Bolognese Dr. Frankenstein who performed medical experiments in London at the turn of the 19th century, now brought back to life by the impeccable Grand Guignol de Milan. Through the eyes of a fictional assistant called Ava Hart, we’re taken on an electrifying journey exploring what makes a spectacle, how to scintillate an audience, and moral qualms about science, religion, politics, performance, medical ethics and the intersections those bring. Scintillating performances from playwright Gianfilippo Maria Falsina Lamberti as Aldini, and Michelangiola Barbieri Torriani as Hart give this story an undeniable philosophical weight, almost as impressive as the staunch playfulness embedded into their retelling of this fascinating story.
Hart has been captured by the Bow Street Runners, and faces charges if she does not faithfully reveal Aldini’s tricks of the trade. As it turns out, she has more culpability in the situation than is first apparent, as she offers to transform the meek Physics professor into a sideshow star, herself meanwhile benefitting from his bizarre treatments. Aldini’s real-life practice focused on Galvanism, the electrical stimulation of muscles, and Grand Guignol here focus on the ethical dilemma of his acquisition of the body of convict George Forster, but simultaneously bash open big questions about Hart’s feminism, Aldini’s poverty, the state of the city of London, and the developing sensibilities of a public bedazzled by gruesome spectacles yet undergoing enlightenment. It’s a masterful feat to fit this into 60 minutes, and Grand Guignol’s team deliver with an equilibrium of candour and wonder.
It is in its form-breaking nature that the piece holds up a mirror to the audience – we are soon taken into one of Aldini & Hart’s public experiments, with the audience becoming active participants that berate, protest and faint at his feet. A play within a play, offered to make us question our own complicity in the ethical quandaries on display. Fear not, we are in Grand Guignol’s safe hands, who create an atmosphere that buzzes with the same sensationalism that Aldini’s experiments created across London in his time.
Torriani & Lamberti’s performance are a tour de force. They bring vitality to both characters and their unusual relationship, providing such vast range as actors that makes the piece truly riveting. Torriani’s vivid facial expressions and remarkable physicality brings Ava to life, close to death, and then back to life again. Hart’s inclusion in the story asks us to consider the role of the patriarchy in forming the divided society in which Aldini’s experiments take place, while Aldini’s character arc makes us question how far we can ethically go in pursuit of eternal life, and the removal of suffering from the world. His was an age cleft by opinions on evolving technologies, as we once again see ourselves facing now, and the kaleidoscopic story in The Greatest Frogman seems dutifully relevant in respect to debates surrounding AI, ageing, and politics.
Lamberti brings such vigour to the journey that Aldini goes on, which makes the piece utterly engrossing, and never for once takes away the audience’s right to choose as to whether he was moral, misguided, irrational or faithful, instead, as a playwright and performer he seeks to shine a light on the crossroads he faced on his ill-fated odyssey to try and reach Edinburgh’s world-famous Surgeons Hall. The entire experience is vastly elevated by Nelson Mallè Ndoye’s live mixing of sound, light and strobe effects, that capture a vibrant sideways world of mystery and macabre intrigue.
To explicate the title, Aldini became famous for performing his experiments at first on a frog, before becoming considered a formidable scientific and entertainment figure. It is this journey in which I now see Grand Guignol de Milan’s work, to revive an archaic Parisian form of graphic, bloody, and sensationalist horror entertainment, become, like Aldini, an utter sensation.
Recommended Drink: A shot of Henbane, or maybe two.
You can catch The Greatest Frogman one last time tonight, Sunday October 18th, as part of Catania OFF Fringe Festival at Piazza Scammacca from 21:30 (60mins). Tickets are available through the Catania OFF Fringe Festival Online Box Office.
Salvador Kent
Mary Kennedy
