2 STARS, Feb 16-17. This confused production turns a cracking Gothic story into a hammy melodrama
The story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde needs little introduction. It’s a Gothic blend of Frankenstein and The Picture of Dorian Gray, and it should be ripe for stage adaptation. Who wouldn’t want to see a man turn into a monster right before their eyes?
The Rose Theatre’s production of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde certainly looks the part. There’s a gloomy, versatile stage, which can transform nimbly from street to smoking room to laboratory. There’s period appropriate costume, including extra large top hats and a sinister silver-topped cane. Simon Higglet, the set and costume designer, has clearly thought carefully about the use of light and darkness. A wall of potions, a revolving door, and a luminous red liquid are illuminated by turn - the stage is amply set for a taut Gothic tale of duality and danger.
But, unfortunately, what we get is a confused melodrama. At the heart of Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a repulsed fascination with human duality. In the book, Jekyll’s transformation into Hyde is so terrible that a man literally dies of shock after witnessing it. It should challenge all our beliefs and assumptions about respectability, goodness and the singleness of the soul.
The transformation in the Rose Theatre’s production is neither convincing nor scary. As Jekyll, Phil Daniels talks with an Edinburgh brogue and holds himself upright. As Hyde, he assumes an exaggerated limp, a gurn, and a thick Glaswegian accent. Quite naturally, this pantomime transformation veers to the comic, and it often feels as though Daniels is playing the part of Hyde for laughs.
Its very hard for even the most credulous audience member to believe that none of the characters on stage can recognise that Jekyll and Hyde are the same man – let alone that anyone would die of shock at the revelation. The only character in the play who sees the truth is Jekyll’s half blind sister, a somewhat cheesy revelation which points to another big problem with the play.
Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has no female characters. This adaptation has added three – Katherine, Jekyll’s sister; Annie Loder, a likeable maid; and an anonymous singer who bridges the scenes by singing nursery rhymes. Perhaps this decision was intended to puncture the misogyny of male Victorian fiction. The problem is that the newly added women have rather clichéd roles. They become Hyde’s victims, raped and maimed, while continuing to extend understanding and kindness to Jekyll. They’re victims and nurturers, rather than developed characters in their own right.
The cast themselves did a very competent job – Sam Cox in particular was strong as Poole, the butler. But sadly, it wasn’t enough to rescue a production that was short on scares, thematically thin, and let down by an immensely anticlimactic transformation.
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