Skip to main content

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

King’s Theatre, Edinburgh
Three stars

The knives are out from the start in this new tour of David Edgar’s wordy reimagining of Robert Louis Stevenson’s gothic split personality yarn. That’s the sound of them being sharpened at the start of Kate Saxon’s production, beneath a low rumble on a bleak looking stage dominated by a bridge that presumably moves between two worlds. Into this steps Phil Daniels’ Jekyll, an emotionally bunged-up sophisticate with a cut-glass Morningside twang and a repressed desire to cut loose. Liberation comes indirectly care of his free-thinking sister Katherine, who gives her already slightly creepy brother freedom of their dead father’s library, where all manner of mind-expanding formulae is presumably archived. Cue the unleashing of the amoral Mr Hyde, who brutalises his way through London before OD’ing on his own excesses.

Edgar’s 1991 play’s liberal reinterpretation adds a female presence to the story that goes beyond victimhood. Saxon runs with this in her Touring Consortium Theatre tour of a show originally seen at the Rose Theatre, Kingston production. As Katherine, Polly Frame makes the most of an under-written role, while Grace Hogg-Robinson as beleaguered runaway maid Annie gets the brunt of the sort of Victorian hypocrisy that Jekyll and Hyde epitomise.  A solitary female singer acts as a kind of spectral chorus left out in the cold.

If things sag at times, flashes of dark humour remain, while Daniels gives a nuanced and at times arch performance as Jekyll and Hyde, originally played by two actors. Here, however, Daniels takes on both men without recourse to smoky potions, hairy hands or excessive gurning. Instead, he manages to blur the two faces of thrill-seeking addiction in a way that goes beyond the binary before its inevitable self-destructive conclusion gets both the better and worst of him.


ends

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...

Edinburgh Rocks – The Capital's Music Scene in the 1950s and Early 1960s

Edinburgh has always been a vintage city. Yet, for youngsters growing up in the shadow of World War Two as well as a pervading air of tight-lipped Calvinism, they were dreich times indeed. The founding of the Edinburgh International Festival in 1947 and the subsequent Fringe it spawned may have livened up the city for a couple of weeks in August as long as you were fans of theatre, opera and classical music, but the pubs still shut early, and on Sundays weren't open at all. But Edinburgh too has always had a flipside beyond such official channels, and, in a twitch-hipped expression of the sort of cultural duality Robert Louis Stevenson recognised in his novel, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a vibrant dance-hall scene grew up across the city. Audiences flocked to emporiums such as the Cavendish in Tollcross, the Eldorado in Leith, The Plaza in Morningside and, most glamorous of all due to its revolving stage, the Palais in Fountainbridge. Here the likes of Joe Loss and Ted Heath broug...

Big Gold Dreams – A Story of Scottish Independent Music 1977-1989

Disc 1 1. THE REZILLOS (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures (12/77)  2. THE EXILE Hooked On You (8/77) 3. DRIVE Jerkin’ (8/77) 4. VALVES Robot Love (9/77) 5. P.V.C. 2 Put You In The Picture (10/77) 6. JOHNNY & THE SELF ABUSERS Dead Vandals (11/77) 7. BEE BEE CEE You Gotta Know Girl (11/77) 8. SUBS Gimme Your Heart (2/78) 9. SKIDS Reasons (No Bad NB 1, 4/78) 10. FINGERPRINTZ Dancing With Myself (1/79)  11. THE ZIPS Take Me Down (4/79) 12. ANOTHER PRETTY FACE All The Boys Love Carrie (5/79)  13. VISITORS Electric Heat (5/79) 14. JOLT See Saw (6/79) 15. SIMPLE MINDS Chelsea Girl (6/79) 16. SHAKE Culture Shock (7/79) 17. HEADBOYS The Shape Of Things To Come (7/79) 18. FIRE EXIT Time Wall (8/79) 19. FREEZE Paranoia (9/79) 20. FAKES Sylvia Clarke (9/79) 21. TPI She’s Too Clever For Me (10/79) 22. FUN 4 Singing In The Showers (11/79) 23. FLOWERS Confessions (12/79) 24. TV21 Playing With Fire (4/80) 25. ALEX FERGUSSON Stay With Me Tonight (1980) ...