Review: "Mary & the Shelleys" Is a Graveyard Smash

Mary & the Shelleys

Created and written by L.X Moon

Presented by FRIGID New York at UNDER St. Marks

94 St. Marks Place, Manhattan, NYC

June 13 and 28, 2025

In the celebratory new single "Wearing Black," from Laura Jane Grace in the Trauma Tropes, trans punk musician Grace sings that her "pride's a riot" and that she will be "[w]earin' black to the Pride parade." If more than one element of that sentence resonates with you, then Mary & the Shelleys, which tells the story of its titular, reanimated Mary through original punk and postpunk songs, should be at the top of your to-see list. Of course, non-punk/horror/horrorpunk fans should also check it out; monstrosity in Mary & the Shelleys is, after all, tied to inclusivity. Mary & the Shelleys is part of FRIGID New York's 2025 Queerly Festival, "FRIGID’s annual celebration of all things artistic and LGBTQIA2S+," which is currently curated by co-artistic director Jimmy Lovett (you can catch Mary & the Shelleys' "Trans-Punk-Horror Roadshow" at other venues this summer as well).

Creator L.X Moon charismatically handles guitar, lead vocals, and the role of Mary in the show, backed by the Shelleys (shells of their formers selves)—Abby on drums and Ray on bass—and the opening song establishes Mary's Frankensteinian origins as a pieced-together reanimated corpse while emphasizing that she feels more alive now than ever in her new, monstrous form. As the music continues, Mary segues into the communitarian conceit that all of the audience members, whether monsters or monster allies, are monsters themselves. And her story begins with her (re)birth, so to speak, in Aberdeen, Texas. The locals don't take well to her presence (although Mary points to an attraction in their repulsion, which also aligns with academic theorizations of the monster and its resistant, nonconforming body), and she is forced to keep moving on, until she encounters Igor (a very funny Alex Cadabra), who informs her that there are "other" kinds of bars to those that Mary knows (and performs a little alcohol-multiplying stage magic). When Mary is harassed at such a bar, a smoldering, leather vest-wearing, muscle-car driving vampire by the name of Lord Byron (credited as Creachur) intervenes–and reveals that they are "like" Mary–setting the two on their way to being a couple. But will Byron's bloodsucking ways turn out to be metaphorical as well as literal? And, not unrelatedly, what will come of Mary's desire to (re)discover her own past?

With well-placed pathos and plenty of humor, Mary's story touches on finding and defining not only community but also self (notably, Igor calls Mary "a woman of her own making"), just as it does the imperative to be kind not only to others but also to oneself, including recognizing toxic relationships. Mary's translation of her experience into music (she says more than once that an experience caused a song to just come to her) also speaks to the role of art in all of this, and a significant portion of the show unfolds like a live performance of a concept album, with characters other than Mary sometimes sharing or taking the vocal lead, including in a comedic number by Igor that draws on some audience participation and a memorable romantic duet between Mary and Byron. There are a number of immediately catchy songs (you can listen to one track included in the show here), some straight-up punk and others leaning towards postpunk, alt rock, or even balladry–the closing song falls into the first category and is defiant fun with a great joke embedded in it. It seems fitting that Mary & the Shelleys' Queerly performances are taking place a ten-minute walk from the former site of CBGBs, suggesting that punk is not, in fact, dead: it's undead–and queer.

-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards