Ellen Cheshire

July's A Year in Gothic live theatrical performance around which the month's films and fiction spun was -320°F, Hideki Noda's strange and unsettling exploration of humanity's desire to overcome mortality. At Sadler's Wells, a biotechnology expedition into a mythical relic becomes a journey through genetic memory, ancient history and scientific ambition, where bodies, identities and timelines begin to blur. The play draws together the Gothic's longstanding fascination with for

Few novels have cast a longer cinematic shadow than Frankenstein. Since its publication in 1818, Mary Shelley’s story of creation, rejection and responsibility has generated hundreds of stage and screen interpretations, most of them circling the same familiar narrative: Victor Frankenstein creates life. The creature is rejected. Tragedy follows. Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley in The Bride! When the trailer for The Bride! appeared, I admit I had some reservations. It seeme

Earlier this year I spent a day in Bath, seeking out locations with a Mary Shelley connection. There aren’t as many as there are for Jane Austen, but they’re worth the search. I whiled away hours in the fascinating Mary Shelley’s House of Frankenstein, which brings the novel’s enduring visual power and legacy vividly to life. Mary Shelley spent a pivotal period in Bath between September 1816 and May 1817. At just 19, she lived at 5 Abbey Churchyard, near Bath Abbey and the Pu