Actors Exchanging Roles: Marketing Ploy or Conceptual Comment?

“Danny Boyle’s hotly anticipated production of Frankenstein… opens next week at the National theatre. The show’s two leads, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, will be alternating the roles of Victor Frankenstein and the Creature … But is this doubling up just an astute marketing ploy? Or is it, perhaps, a broader commentary? Can the relationship of Frankenstein and the Creature tell us anything about the symbiotic relationship of stage and audience? Even about the theatre itself?”