JEKYLL AND HYDE

JEKYLL AND HYDE

Shenfield Operatic Society at Brentwood Theatre

08.06.2016

Not everyone's favourite show, Jekyll and Hyde, the musical in which the legendary Leslie Bricusse had a hand back in the 80s. It turns Stevenson's taut, psychological tale into an over-blown melodrama with one good tune, some leaden lyrics and some risible rhymes.

So it was lucky that Shenfield were able to bring a fine cast and skilled creatives to the bachelor party.

David Pridige is the eponymous tortured soul [“You don't seem to be quite yourself tonight, Dr Jekyll...”], switching from good to evil with a change of vocal timbre and a red scarf. He is a ruthless psychopath in this version, frightening ladies in the street and bumping off his enemies in a string of 'orrible murders, including the Bishop of Basingstoke [Lloyd Bonson], bludgeoned to death with his own crozier. Sir Danvers [Bob Southgate], who does die in the book, is spared, though, perhaps because he is to be Jekyll's father-in-law.

The cod-operatic score is well handled for the most part, with impressive work from the two women in the Doctor's life – Emma [Rachel Watson], his betrothed, and Lucy [Kate Smith], a whore he meets on his stag do in the Red Rat, a scene Stevenson somehow omitted, somewhere between La Cage Aux Folles, the Kit Kat Club and the Three Cripples. Their duet - “In His Eyes” - one of the best things in the show.

Solid support from a huge cast of Victorian characters [Alli Smith's Utterson, Jamie Fudge's Stride and David Ward's Herbert to name but three], with excellent use of the stage area and imaginative groupings and choreography: the quartet near the end of Act One, the Murder Murder opening to Act Two and the final tragic tableau, all superbly done. The lighting was starkly effective, especially for Jekyll's very modest laboratory.

Jekyll and Hyde is directed by Kerry McGowan, with Ian Southgate the MD.

JEKYLL AND HYDE

JEKYLL AND HYDE

Chelmsford Theatre Workshop at the Old Court

14.11.11

Leonard H Caddy's wordy version of this familiar tale is rather as J B Priestley might have penned it – theology, morality, psychology discussed in a middle-class parlour, with occasional flashes of high drama. Fortunately, CTW have the confidence, and the accomplished cast, to bring it off.   

“Deep inside each of us is the person we really are ,"...and it is Jekyll's ambition to explore that reality, experimenting on himself in a tiny laboratory just off his "man's room" a typical parlour nicely realised in this set design.

Jim Crozier was masterly as the doctor, and the devil buried within. His struggle to change, and change back, was chilling. His mien, demeanour, gait all altered before our eyes, so I felt that the mask, and the fumbling behind the table, were superfluous.

Many fine performances in support, including Richard Baylis as Lanyon and Roger Johnson as Jekyll's gentleman's gentleman. Caddy's play, like many other adaptations, introduces new female characters, perhaps to underline the Freudian subtext. Anna Jeary was excellent as naive Little Lottie, and Catherine Kenton gave an elegant, poised performance as the doctor's intended – a nice cameo too from Ruth Cramphorn as her opposite number, Hyde's doxy from the wrong side of the tracks.

The final moments, with Barry Taylor's Utterson off to burn the evidence, and Jekyll dead on the parlour floor, were movingly staged, leaving us to ponder what lies beneath, deep within us all.

JEKYLL AND HYDE

THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE

Cut to the Chase at the Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch

01.11.11

A World Premiere at the Queen's for Halloween, a version of the classic Gothic tale set in a Music Hall just up the road in the East End, the seedy Victorian milieu where Jekyll's alter ego roamed in search of pleasure.

Chris Bond's inspired adaptation includes lots of songs from the period, including Marble Halls and a lovely temperance number, a cod operation, a vent act, some Doctor Doctor jokes, silent cinema-style underscoring from Satie, Dukas, Stravinsky and others, two quite savage satirical numbers and a couple of singalongs from the band.

In the case of Cut to the Chase, that means the company, of course – where else would the programme credit “Whore – cello, keys, percussion” - the excellent Karen Fisher-Pollard. And who's that sinister white-faced figure playing trombone at the back ? Simon Jessop, who's our Chairman at the Billet Lane Bucket of Blood, and also manages several other roles including a splendidly Wildean Mrs Jekyll.

It's all over in 90 minutes – plus an interval, with special J&H cocktails on offer – so you'd be forgiven for fearing that Stevenson might be killed in the rush, lost in the laughter. But no, a change of scene and mood, and generous quotations from the text remind us of the philosophical under-pinning of this story of dark duality – we are not one man, but two, not one nation, but two. The writing veered crazily between Carry On, sibilant narration and sub-Tennyson verse. And miraculously never came off the rails.

Matt Devitt's production is very stylish [Norman Coates the designer – after Doré], with an intricate proscenium arch, a lovely lab for the Doctor, with its altar-like bench for him to play God on, and a surreal keyhole door for peeping Tom Jude, who gave a powerfully melodramatic Jekyll. Mark Stanford was the wounded soldier and Jekyll's friend and mentor Lanyon, Rachel Dawson was the Sally Army girl and the doomed Ellen, and MD Carol Sloman gave us a definitive male impersonator Toff, in the style of Burlington Bertie.

There have been many dramatic adaptations. Just months after Stevenson's tale first hit the bookshops, work had begun on a stage version, and since then we've had a blockbuster musical and David Edgar's play for the RSC. I think Bond's gallimaufry of styles comes off well – it worked for Crippen, I recall, and of course for Sweeney Todd. And that's no coincidence, since it was Bond's 1973 play that Stephen Sondheim saw and set to music ...


production photo by Nobby Clark

THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE

European Arts Company at the Civic Theatre

06.05.10

Frankenstein and Dracula live on in the popular imagination as spoofs, parodies and pantomimes. Character names and key moments survive, the rest changes at the whim of producer and performer.

Jonathan Kemp's playful retelling of Stevenson's story begins with the earliest stage version, by Richard Mansfield. It presents this as the crudest melodrama, and borrows that style for its own travesty, imagining Mansfield confronted by a “real” Jekyll.

The action uses the saloon bar of the Ten Bells, doubtless more at home in more intimate venues, and presses the furniture and properties into service to tell the story – the bottles behind the bar becoming the phials in Jekyll's lab, for instance.

A good notion, but we sometimes wished for a little more magic and a little less frantic manhandling. And was it necessary to adlib introductions each time ?

Entertaining performances from four hardworking actors: Arthur James as a snooty Poole, Richard Latham as the Actor Laddie, Jennifer Bryden as most of the women [not true, incidentally, that there are no women in the original - programme note], and William Hartley very watchable as the nerdy Jekyll and his swaggering alter ego, emerging like the Genie of the Lamp from the blue light and the smoke.

The reworked plot – potency potion, Whitechapel Murders, “Your tom cat is the Beast of Bloomsbury!” - tries anything for a laugh, though there is some authentic sounding dialogue, and, surprisingly, the darker, more philosophical drama re-surfaces effectively in Act Two.

A large part of the audience were students, making notes. I hope they were Theatre Studies – rich pickings in this hit and miss production – rather than English Literature, since what they saw had all the literary integrity of a Two Ronnies sketch …