Variations on 'Jekyll'
Production's compelling approach to a classic bogs down in plot points.
Bristol Riverside Theatre's
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
isn't exactly the twin of Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novella, evil or otherwise. In Jeffrey Hatcher's adaptation, there is only one gentlemanly Jekyll (Michael Sharon), but four beastly Hydes, along with some common folk exhibiting Hyde-like inclinations.
Hatcher steps away from Stevenson, adding a love interest and deepening Jekyll's internal conflict. How necessary are all those potions, anyway? Hatcher implies that there is a monster within every man (and woman) and that it doesn't take much provocation to let it loose. As a witness to one of Hyde's rampages says, she would have reported the crime sooner, "but the bad in me wanted to watch."
Hatcher employs some effective devices with which to make his point, as a chorus of Hydes joins in to threaten fetching chambermaid Elizabeth Jelkes (Eileen Ward). Meanwhile, Elizabeth finds herself captivated by Hyde and repulsed by Jekyll, a phenomenon nice guys everywhere will surely recognize as the trigger for their own inner Hydes. Hatcher's interpretation of the tale might be considered downright Nietzschean, or at the very least, forcefully modern, except that it's couched in so many fussy plot points that any aspirations to edginess are beaten into submission, much like Hyde's victims.
Keith Baker's stiff direction doesn't help, using economy of movement during Hatcher's longer, exposition-heavy scenes, and waiting until Act 2 to allow any humor to air out the heavy Victorian trappings. There's little true menace in any of the Hydes, and it's particularly absent during Robert Ian MacKenzie's clumsy, cartoonish initial attack on a small child - an attack that ought to set a dark tone for the rest of the production. And while, of the cast, Ward and Sharon best convey their characters' dual natures and crises of conscience, Ezra Barnes (with more stage time as his version of Hyde than the other, sporadic Hydes) sputters rather than sparks.
There's nothing of Stevenson's "abnormal and misbegotten . . . seizing, surprising and revolting" Hyde here, but neither is there Hatcher's smoldering dark angel. It's probably not even his fault, but Barnes is just plain likeable, his Hyde a fairly sympathetic fellow who meets Elizabeth's heaving bodice with moderate enthusiasm and obligatory swashbuckling.
There's certainly something to Hatcher's effort to add a psychoanalytic twist to this well-known and much-adapted story. You just won't find that something in this play or this production.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Through Oct. 17 at Bristol Riverside Theatre, 120 Radcliffe St., Bristol. Tickets: $31 to $36. Information: 215-785-0100 or www.brtstage.org.
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