The story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has had more stage and
screen adaptations over the years than it’s sensible to try and count. This new
stage version, adapted for Storyhouse by Glyn Maxwell, had me almost as much in
two minds as Robert Louis Sevenson’s tragic central character.
It is a very tightly wrought adaptation, focused into a
single 80 minute span. Katie Lyas’s stage design is spectacularly detailed. Outlines
of buildings and doorways are picked out in industrial plumbing against grimy Victorian
brickwork and cobbles, also suggesting the laboratory, whilst the four actors
are costumed in similarly attentive period detail.
Maxwell has chosen to split the twin personas of Jekyl and
Hyde between two performers, the brittle and nervously charged Edward Harrison therefore
being able to see his louring sinister counterpart both in and out of the
mirror in the form of Matthew Flynn. Whilst Harrison sweeps about in manic
confusion, Flynn lumbers almost like Frankenstein’s monster, desperately trying
to understand who he is and who made him, oddly obsessed by his coat, hat and
boots.
Meanwhile, the part of Jekyll’s servant Utterson has been
cleft in two also, and now becomes two women – a fellow scientist and her niece,
played by Natasha Bain and Rosa Hesmondhalgh. It’s an idea which Maxwell uses
to mirror the splitting of Jekyll’s own personality, however there is a limit
to how effectively this works in practice.
The gothic atmosphere of Stevenson’s novella is well wrought,
with the help of low-key lighting from Neill Brinkworth, but Psyche Scott’s
direction becomes ponderous at times. The text is very word heavy, making it
feel somewhere between a play and a dramatised reading of the book.
The production wins on strong visual appeal and four very focused
performances, but it struggles to build dramatic energy under the weight of its
dialogue.
 |
Star Rating: Three Stars
Comments
Post a Comment