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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2011 > October > 31 > Entry
Review: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’
An appropriately eerie fog made blurry the set onstage at UT’s B. Iden Payne Theatre Friday evening for the opening of the Department of Theatre and Dance’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” an adaptation by Jeffrey Hatcher of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella, “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
And what better time to present this work than the weekend leading up to Halloween? On-the-mark acting, beautifully dark scenic and costume designs, and the direction work all meld to create an ironically unified vision for this story about split personalities.
The entirely student-produced production features six actors from the department’s MFA and BA programs who don intricate Victorian-era wigs, makeup and garb (Yao Chen’s designs for the coats and stiff, popped collared shirts are marvelous), and live in a society of old world wrought-iron grills and austere edifices (scenic design by Rowan Doyle).
Directed by MFA candidate Daria Davis, the technical aspects of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” reinforce the central theme: the Jekyll/Hyde split. While Will Brittain primarily plays the role of the violent Mr. Hyde, three other actors are stand-ins for the character; at other moments, all four Hydes share the stage at once, lined up diagonally, each offering a different twisted perspective. Mr. Hyde, as Dr. Jekyll’s (Kyle Christopher Schnack) evil doppelganger, is capable of anything, so it is appropriate that multiple actors portray his multitude of actions. Brittain is menacing at one instant, then soft the next when in the presence of his love, Elizabeth Jelkes (Liz Kimball). The set, though unchanged throughout both acts, makes use of the space dynamically by incorporating columns on wheels utilized to divide and subdivide the space accordingly.
As the play is about a man who, in an alternative state of mind, commits multiple murders and other atrocities, the issue of lifeless bodies and blood and how to portray them on the stage is raised. This production offers creatively dramatic solutions — stuffed sacks are stand-ins for corpses, and bags slashed open to spill blood-red beans and sand artfully imitate the escape of vital fluids from the body.
When Dr. Jekyll comes to the realization of his own guilt, suicide seems his only option to forever silence his murderous side. And yet Mr. Hyde, who approaches the audience head-on by stepping out onto the thrust stage, red sand all the while draining from the sack in his hand, has somehow managed to survive. He has come into his own as the true Dr. Jekyll.
“Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” continues through Nov. 6 at UT’s B. Iden Payne Theatre. www.texasperformingarts.org
Claire Christine Spera is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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