You’ve seen Frankenstein—but have you ever seen Frankenstein with a techno beat? When pop songwriter Jimmy Harry set out to adapt his mother’s Frankenstein play, Playing With Fire, into a musical, he didn’t want it to sound like anything currently running on Broadway. He wanted this Frankenstein to be not period, but modern. “Most of the music that people have danced to for the last 40 years has been techno, house, hip-hop, and industrial music. That’s just not been referenced at all in theatre, where dance is so important,” he tells Playbill. “So we wanted to inject theatre with some of that.”
Harry’s mother, Barbara Field, died in 2021, but Harry had loved her Frankenstein adaptation since he was a boy. And when he showed the script to his longtime friend, JC Chasez, the former NSYNC member immediately agreed to come onboard as a collaborator. Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the duo wrote one song after another. Before they knew it, they had enough music for a whole musical—which they’re now releasing as a concept album. The Playing With Fire album features three singers: Chasez as the Creature, Cardamon Rozzi as Victor Frankenstein, and Lily Elise as Frankenstein’s love Elizabeth. Though the ultimate goal is a full Broadway musical, the duo didn’t want to wait years before people could hear their music. The album is now available to stream from Center Stage Records. And they tease there will be a live concert in the next six months.
Says Chasez, “What I've learned is that musicals do take a while. We can't control the timing of all the aspects, but we have the ability to make this music—that’s something we can control. And so we just decided to go full steam ahead and not wait for the musical to go into some sort of production.”
Below, Harry and Chasez break down every song on the Playing With Fire album, liner notes-style, including which song has a Sweeney Todd reference. Their remarks have been edited for length and clarity. Spoilers abound if you don’t know the story of Frankenstein.
1. “This Is How the World Ends”
JC Chasez: “‘This Is How the World Ends,’ which I think is just the greatest opening line. [laughs] That song came about later in the writing process. We had about three quarters of the songs in place, and we always imagined it starting with ‘How Do You Sleep.’ But we realized that we needed to bring everybody into the world of where we were. Because everybody has a vague notion of what Frankenstein is, but we just wanted to set the table for our Frankenstein.”
Jimmy Harry: “It’s kind of like what Sondheim did with the beginning of Sweeney Todd, but in our way. It's telling our version of the story, and introducing the characters.”
2. “How Do You Sleep”
Harry: “In Barbara's play, the Creature's always asking questions [of Frankenstein]. Essentially, the premise is, the creature says, ‘Hey, why did you make me? I need these answers. And, you know, if you tell me everything, then you can kill me. It's all cool.’ So it's sort of a confrontation, right? Through the first half, Frankenstein answers most of Creature’s questions. And then in the second half of the play, we learn more about Creature, and he answers Frankenstein's questions. And they come to an understanding. This song sort of sets the table for that.
“We wanted to make it super goth. So we were kind of like referencing Nine Inch Nails and Depeche Mode. I was learning a lot about Beethoven, because it was COVID and that was my project. I learned about the Romantic period and put some of that element to the music. So this really kind of formed the basis, musically, of what was going to come.”
3. “You Used to Touch Me”
Harry: “Basically, Creature asks the question: ‘How did you make me?’ And then Frankenstein goes, ‘I made you from dead party parts. I spent so much time. I know every incision, I know every part of you. I did it like a mother nurses a child.’ And then, the Creature says, ‘Why don't you look at me?’ He goes, ‘Because you're ugly.’ The Creature says, ‘Well, do you still love me? What changed?’ And then he sings his song.”
4. “Broken”
Chasez: “‘Broken’ was probably the song that took the longest to write.”
Harry: “A month.”
Chasez: “Yeah, we went back and forth about our choices, in terms of how we wanted the song to play out, and what effect we wanted it to have. There's five characters in this piece: there's Frankenstein and there's Victor (which is young Frankenstein), there's Creature and there's Adam (which is young Creature), and then there's Elizabeth. We knew that her songs just had to be fucking amazing, to put it rudely. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves because we just wanted her songs to be great, and this song to be great—because to me, it's the catalyst for everything.”
Harry: “It's the death of Victor's mother. And it's the unhappiness with Elizabeth, with her situation, and the hopelessness she feels. And it just kind of sets the table for everything wrong that's going to happen from that point on.”
Chasez: “And Lily sings the lights out of it!”
5. “The Beginning”
Harry: “This is a beautiful love song [for Victor and Elizabeth], but they're really talking at each other. She just says, ‘Okay, I'm gonna love you.’ And he goes, ‘I'm gonna fix it, so what happened to my mother doesn’t happen to you.’”
Chasez: “They're both hearing what they want to hear, but not necessarily what's being said. That's kind of what love can do at times. I guess you can want something so much that you're willing to see what you want to see, and maybe not the reality of what's being presented to you.”
Harry: “Love is the great blindness maker for sure.”
6. “One Over R Squared Part 1”
Harry: “My mom was sort of a physicist groupie. My father was a physicist, and so there was a scene in her play with this physicist and they're discussing the inverse square ratio. And we were like, ‘No one's ever written a song called “One Over R Squared.' Originally, it was a song between Victor and his professor. But as we learned with our reading at the Playwrights’ Center, it turned out it was perfect for Elizabeth and Victor. It's a cute, flirty, fun song. But at the end of it, Elizabeth says, ‘What do you want to do?’ And he goes, ‘I want to discover life and death.’ And she goes, ‘Oh, that's cute.’ And blows it off.”
7. “I Found Death at the University”
Harry: “‘I Found Death at the University’ is answering another question that Creature asks: ‘Why did you make me?’ And he's showing him why: ‘My mother died. I was depressed. I wanted to save this person.’ But at the end of that song, he admits, ‘I got caught up in my own ego about it. I wanted to be the first to create life out of refuse.’ It lets you into his craziness a little bit more.”
8. “One Over R Squared Part 2”
Harry: “We call this ‘Dark One Over R Squared.’ So Elizabeth comes back, she hasn't heard from Victor for months. He's going to look like a totally different person when you see him on stage. He's going to be clean shaven at first, but he's going to have a beard here. He's not going to be washed. And she's going to walk in there and go, ‘We thought you were dead. What’s that thing?’ And he's going to say, ‘Hey, leave me alone. I'm a genius. Get out of here.’ And at the end of it, she's like, ‘Okay, I'll just come back.’ She doesn't get his dad, she doesn't call the police or the school because she loves him. She just wants him to be happy.”
Chasez: [in a sing-song voice] “Tragic flaw…..”
Harry: “[For the musical motif in Part 1 and Part 2]: We're pop songwriters, so you have to inject catchy things. Maybe in the vocal, but sometimes, you just need a little theme that's gonna augment that. So it's a cute little hook, and very sort of almost Blade Runner-y. It’s evocative of ’70s, ’80s, sci-fi movies. And there’s a bit of Bach in there, as well."
9. “The Animation”
Harry: “It's literally the birth of the creature. It's going to be a big spectacle on stage.”
Chasez: “And at the same time, the Creature’s basically, like, ‘Hey, this is incredibly painful, because I know what I become.’ And so, he’s also trying to prevent Frankenstein from even bringing him to life in the first place. The classic Frankenstein theme is you have to bring the creature to life. As much as you want to put a twist on something, we have to honor the classic point of view as well.”
10. “Father”
Harry: “It's about the moment Adam becomes sentient. The first thing he sees is Victor and he says, ‘I feel attached to this person.’ And what happens in the scene is Victor ties him up and leaves him for days, and then the creature escapes. So here he’s saying ‘I loved you. Why did you fuck me over? You're the shittiest father ever.’ And Frankenstein apologizes.”
11. “No One Loves No One”
Chasez: “This is basically the Creature calling everything out in a way, saying, ‘Hey, man, this is just unnatural. And you wonder why I am the way I am. All I've known is pain. All I've known is to be cast out and to have zero connection, when everything on earth basically has a connection with something.’ It's one of the pieces that really humanizes the creature.”
12. “It’s Just a Dream”
Chasez: “Again, this is two people talking past each other.”
Harry: “It's based on this part of my mom's adaptation where Victor's having a dream, and Elizabeth knows something's off. During this whole scene, you're going to be seeing the death of [Victor’s brother] William. So when she goes, ‘Tell me if there's someone else. What's going on with you?'"
Chasez: “She's trying to comfort him, but she's a bit insecure about what's going on. And then you see this, again, horrible thing going on.”
13. “Build Me Someone to Love”
Chasez: “This song is just kind of fun, because everybody's imagined their perfect person. The Creature’s pleading: ‘I've done everything wrong, I've made your life hell. But if I have someone, I will leave you in peace. All of this can go away if you just build me someone.’”
Harry: “The Creature almost seduces Frankenstein. You see in this piece, he is likable. He's not quite a monster—he's sensible, he's logical, and he talks Frankenstein into it. What better way to persuade somebody to do something than a really good song?”
Chasez: “It’s a total pop tune. I couldn't help myself.” [laughs]
14. “Playing With Fire”
Harry: “Victor’s kind of gone AWOL, and Elizabeth hunts him down. And she gets the truth out of him—he tells her, and that's her reaction to it.”
Chasez: “We made the conscious decision to add more to the role of Elizabeth, because we just knew that she was kind of the key piece—who's going to call out Victor Frankenstein? This song we had a blast with.”
Harry: “It was the last song we wrote for the piece as well. We knew we needed a total banger for Elizabeth—we wanted something really hard and strong for her and fun.”
Chasez: “And for the piece. It’s the name of the play, you know what I mean? And the fun part was, like, when we were experimenting…We were talking about the impact that opera has. And how musical theatre and opera are two different things, and yet they kind of dance close to one another. And there's real value in both. And so, we were like, ‘Why don't we just mess around and write an opera part in there?!”
Harry: “We’re sort of referencing ‘The Queen of the Night’ aria [from Mozart's The Magic Flute] a little bit. [Turns to Chasez] When you see her doing that with, like, eight Elizabeths behind her on stage, that's going to be an insane moment. Or 20 Elizabeths all singing this ‘Queen of the Night’-ish opera hovering over this little dude who's going to look like an ant next to this valkyrie. It's going to be kind of dope, right?”
15. “The Death of the Brides”
Harry: “We see a big party for Creature, like it's a big Jewish wedding. And at the end of the day, Victor says, ‘I can't do this.’ Because the guilt from Elizabeth has gotten to him, and he's really thinking about things for once. And he ends up destroying the bride. And then Adam swears revenge.
“After that, you have the denouement. Frankenstein and Creature, they're both watching it like it's a TV show. You're going to see creature Adam dance with Elizabeth and then choke her to death. And then, Creature's going to go, ‘Kill me now, kill me.’ And then Frankenstein goes, ‘No, I did this with mirrors.’ And they're going to connect. They're gonna actually have a moment where it's like, I forgive you. And then Frankenstein says, ‘You can go.’ And Creature says, ‘Where am I gonna go? I'm nothing without you.’ Then Frankenstein says, ‘Oh, let me take you home.’ Then Frankenstein has a heart attack. And then you get, ‘Don’t Go (I'm Not Ready Yet).’"
16. “Don’t Go (I'm Not Ready Yet)”
Chasez: “It sounds like a sad song but it’s actually really beautiful.”
Harry: “At the end of ‘Don't Go,’ the Creature’s going to hold Frankenstein, and you're going to see basically, the heat death of the universe. You're going to see the sun go supernova, then it's going to be dark and you just see stars. And then the stars are going to go out, and it's going to be dark, except you're just going to see, like, an infrared of Creature holding Frankenstein, and it might look a little bit like a heart. And that will be the end of the show.”
Chasez: “Frankenstein's whole thing is, I'm going to sustain life forever. But the reality is, there is no forever.”
Harry: “It's the question of: Why were we here? Were we here because of cocaine? No! It's love. And love of life, whatever you love doing, loving somebody, the love I have for my son—that's a powerful thing and that's the great reason.”
Listen to Playing With Fire here.
