FOUR actors from the Warrington area are taking the lead in a new production that opens in Manchester before it goes to New York.

Wendy Jones, from Lowton, stars in Karlton Parris’s Beautiful Monster about Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, in the final hours of her life. The 55-year-old will be joined on stage for the first time by her daughter Mollie Jones who has three roles in the ensemble. The 17-year-old’s dad is David Jones, who runs Warrington’s Presto Music School.

Edward Darling, from Newton, plays Mary’s husband Percy Shelley and former Bridgewater High pupil Corin Silva will play the two ‘villains’ of the piece, the notorious Lord Byron and Frankenstein’s Monster.

The Skint Theatre production, based on true events, will cut back in time from Mary’s last day where she is deteriorating from a brain tumour and her experiences with her husband Percy Shelley, their lover Lord Byron, poet John Keats and literary rival John William Polidori, author of the first known vampire fiction.

Wendy, who is also part of a cabaret duo called China Dolls, said: “The illness makes her hallucinate and remember that very famous night at Lake Geneva where the novel of Frankenstein was birthed. Then in act two it is about the extraordinary relationships the romantics had. As you go through the play you understand that the main thread is that Byron is the monster. He was a monstrous man.”

Corin, of Manchester Road, added: “Lord Byron was quite the character. He was a bit of a lothario and his temper and his brilliance went hand in hand. He was amazing and captivating to all those around him. I somehow have to replicate that.

“There is an academic theory that Mary Shelley wrote the character of the creature with Lord Byron in mind because of how he was with the rest of the romantics. He had quite a presence in all of their lives. He had fits of rage but he was also incredibly sensitive to all the others in different ways.

“I’ve been reading a lot of his stuff. Unfortunately some of the most truthful parts of his character have been lost because some of his friends and colleagues agreed among themselves to burn his personal memoirs. They read them all over a period of days after he died and agreed they should never be viewed by anyone else.

“Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, John Keats and John William Polidori are all very famous now but I want people to see how they would have interacted with one another. They were called the romantics but they had many facets to their personality and that’s something we’re trying to explore. Some of the things those guys got up to would have boggled the mind.”

Wendy has been in all of Skint Theatre’s productions over nearly 20 years but playing Mary Shelley has brought back memories of her uni days.

She said: “It’s such an iconic character and for me it’s quite bizarre as my degree was English literature at Salford University and I actually studied Frankenstein and Mary Shelley. So I went straight back to my bookshelves and dug out my notes. The other strange thing about me playing Mary Shelley is that we’re virtually the same age. She died quite young in her early 50s and I’m 55.”

Blurring the lines between reality and fiction, another strand of the story is how Frankenstein’s Monster reconciles with his real creator, Mary.

Corin, who recently enjoyed success with Pizza Delique at Edinburgh Fringe 2016, added: “He’s a very tragic character. The challenge is not just getting across his aggression and the rage. Because it is obvious when you know the character that he is a tortured soul and he wants to love and he wants to be loved.”

n Beautiful Monster is at Salford Arts Theatre until Saturday. Visit salfordartstheatre.com