Second City alumni premiering Frankenstein’s Daughter in Stratford this October

Alastair Forbes, Jim Annan and Clare Blackwood at a 2019 reading of Frankenstein’s Daughter at Scripted Toronto.

CONNOR LUCZKA, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The world premiere of Frankenstein’s Daughter will be a Second City reunion here in Stratford this October.

The comedy play will be staged by Process Theatre in Here For Now Theatre’s black box space on St. Andrew Street and was written by Deb Lacusta and Dan Castellanetta, a husband-and-wife writing duo and alumni from The Second City in Chicago. Readers may also recognize Castellanetta as the iconic voice of Homer Simpson.

The play is directed by Michael J. Gellman, a Second City mainstage director and the former artistic director for the Canadian stage in Toronto, as well as one half of Process Theatre, a Stratford-based ensemble that embraces improvisation to assist in developing new plays.

Deborah Smith, the other half of Process Theatre and Gellman’s wife, explained that they all go way back.

“They were his students in his class and have been friends of his for over 40 years, maybe 30, 40 years, so they’re good friends of ours,” Smith said. “Michael's directed everybody. He directed (Stephen) Colbert and (Steve) Carell and John Candy and Gilda Radner. He's 73 now, so I guess you would call him semi-retired, because he refuses to retire.”

Smith explained that she and Gellman hosted the Scripted Toronto festival at Theatre Passe Muraille before the COVID-19 pandemic, where they got about 50 writers together to read new works and see what they were excited about. Lacusta and Castellanetta came up from Los Angelos and read Frankenstein’s Daughter. As Smith said, they “loved it, loved it, loved it.”

“It's just hilarious. It's so funny. It's like The Odd Couple but on steroids. It's two totally different people in a cabin in the woods battling it out, basically having different opinions, different views … And it's just the lines. The writing is brilliant, and of course it's brilliant. These are the writers from The Simpsons, right? So, funny, funny, funny. Every line is rich and they're jewels. And of course, because my husband was directing in Second City for so many years and these guys are comedy specialists, you need to run this like a well-run pianoforte, you know? So the timing is brilliant and fast and quick. When it's all together, you get something which is incredibly talented and gifted and well-run. It's got to be seen.”

Post pandemic, Smith said that it felt like the stars were aligning for this production. Here For Now Theatre opened their space up for rent, they had a stellar work like Frankenstein’s Daughter prepared for the Halloween season and Lacusta and Castellanetta were ready to come to Stratford for the first time.

“It’s serendipity,” Smith said.

Frankenstein’s Daughter runs on the weekends from Oct. 16-26. It stars Jim Annan and Alastair Forbes, two Second City alumni themselves, and fans of Mary Shelley’s works should be warned that despite its name, neither Dr. Frankenstein nor his creature make a prolonged appearance in the production. It contains mature content and is not recommended for audiences under 14 years of age.

Tickets are $30 and can be purchased at https://processtheatre.com/store.