First things first: the setting for this version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is superb. The State Drawing Room at the restored Boston Manor House is just the place for an adaptation of the novella by Robert Louis Stevenson to unfold.
There’s been a brutal murder of one Sir Danvers Carew, a local MP. Barrister Gabriel Utterson (Nick Barraclough) is visiting his friend and patron, Dr Henry Jekyll (Liam Smith), on a wet and stormy night.
When Jekyll’s ward, Rowena Enfield (Phoebe Taylor-Jones), also arrives to join the gathering, matters start to take a sinister turn. Rowena and Utterson find a document that seems to point to some unsavoury secret, but the truth is far stranger.
Laura Hannawin is the director, and she has utilised the wide room to suggest Dr Jekyll’s apartment and its faded grandeur. The lighting is inspired and atmospheric, but the play – written by Jack Fairey – would benefit from a bit more colour with some music or a more varied sound design.
The performances are strong. Smith plays both the amiable Dr Jekyll and his vicious alter ego Edward Hyde with great skill, holding back from histrionics and instead adding a potent air of desperation and resolution.
Taylor-Jones is clearly the poor orphan girl given a chance and a place in the world, and her Rowena becomes more governed by fear and grief as the story progresses.
In Utterson, Barraclough has a difficult role, as this is a man without humour and weighed down by an immovable moral compass. Put simply, he isn’t much fun. But all that comes across well enough.
With the windows blacked out and some unlit candles dotted about, the stage is certainly set for some Victorian intrigue. In Fairey’s script, Stevenson’s original concept of Utterson bringing along a male friend to Jekyll’s house is switched out with some success.
It also contracts the months covered by the original story to one night, while excising characters not immediately required. These changes increase tension and focus the plot on the mechanics of good and evil.
This is a good production which I enjoyed watching, but it does not bring anything particularly startling or original to a story that has been adapted, reworked, and perhaps overexposed since 1886.
A Halloween treat, nevertheless. I’m giving this 3 stars.
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a production by Arts Centre Hounslow and played at Boston Manor House until 1 Nov.
Photo credit: Arts Centre Hounslow