Vince got me a ticket to see this the other night for my birthday. 

Five stars, highly recommended, would see again, would name my kid after it.  

And then there's the tech, which is its own 5-star event. 

Seriously, my capsule review is that the script is so tightly woven, the actors so genuine and the moments so heightened, that you really could have done this show with just "lights up, let 'em at it, lights down." and then Danny Boyle (who directed the London Summer Olympics opening ceremony, Slumdog Millionaire, etc. etc.), brings in his visual aesthetic, while being smart enough to stay out of the actors' way.  So you have what seems like an ocean of starlight descending from the heavens, and then you realize it's a million individual antique light bulbs, each on its own cord, each globe housing a visible glowing filament. 

Miller and Cumberbatch complement each other perfectly, and I wish I could have seen it twice. I saw it with Miller as the Creature, an incredibly physical, potentially exhausting role. Victor, comparatively speaking, is British and wears beautiful clothes.  So, seeing it with Cumberbatch as Victor was kind of like watching Sherlock with the volume turned up higher. Not bad, just not wildly different. 

If the Creature hasn't been on stage for a while and we get a little break from the absolute force of nature that he is, we can see Victor's brilliance, his drive for knowledge and desire to dissect the indefinable spark of life. Put them both on stage together, and it's like watching an orca meeting a seal; the seal's really pretty and wonderful in and of itself, but blink and you might miss it. Unless the orca's decided to let you see the seal.  

It gave me a ton of food for thought, which is why I'm digging into a Mary Shelley biography right now. 

It is still playing through the month of November, but hard to find. There are two screenings scheduled in Princeton in the next couple of weeks. I don't think I'm going to have time to see it again, but if you do, you should. ntlive.com.