Theatre Mill are a company unlike any other. Their immersive, site-specific productions invoke an atmosphere from the minute the audience arrive and leave you completely wrung out as you spill from whichever stunning building they have chosen to inhabit. In August, I left exhausted from laughing at their ‘Importance of Being Earnest’, a joyous romp alive with sassiness and silliness, and last night, emerging from this superb new production of ‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, many of the audience seemed profoundly affected by the story of a man who wants to change the world and his friends and colleagues who are destroyed by his efforts.
Passing through a Victorian tavern with a blazing fire, complete with drunks and maids, there is something instantly gothic about the Undercroft of the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall, which sits in an historic quarter of York. Seedy and sinister, it sends chills up the spine before the performance even begins. There is a light mist in the air, the doctor’s lab is full of oddly coloured liquids, and a haunting rumbling sound pulses through the space.
So what of the performance itself? Samuel Wood’s staging must be commended first of all – it is sharp and fluid and quick to spring a surprise. Moments of stillness blend with moments of emotional intensity and sudden bursts of sheer terror. Without giving too much away, there are some wonderful coups-de-theatre, not least a powerfully but simply realised shift from Jekyll to Hyde and a breathtaking slow-motion murder scene. As is the fashion with this company, scene changes are swift and effective and the lighting design a beautiful thing to behold. The snappy and clever adaptation by Nick Lane, first seen at Hull Truck, excellently conveys Jekyll’s inward struggle with disability and his love for his colleague’s wife, and fleshes out all the supporting characters enough to make us care about every single one of them.
Splitting all the roles between them, the cast of four are magnificent. James Weaver’s Jekyll is a quietly tortured, awkward, and thrillingly ambitious Dr. Jekyll and a dark, unsettling, brutal Mr. Hyde, showing an impressive intensity and physicality required for such challenging characters. Weaver never overdoes anything – it feels thrillingly and scarily real. In a detailed and extremely natural performance, Viktoria Kay fizzes with energy and longing as Eleanor, the woman who falls in love with Jekyll and also makes an impact as a prostitute who finds herself in grave danger. Kay has been served well by Lane’s punchy female characters and she more than rises to the occasion. Matching her in emotional truth and subtlety is Adam Elms as Jekyll’s loyal lawyer friend, Gabriel Utterson, the narrator of the story, his quiet authority suddenly punctured by powerful flashes of determination; throughout the evening, Elms movingly charts the journey of a good man who slowly unravels in front of our eyes. As well as two well-judged portraits of a jittery cockney inspector and man-about-town, David Chafer plays Hastie Lanyon, Jekyll’s assistant, beautifully, a man brought down by his own sweet and old-fashioned nature, providing us with a few of the weepy moments when, suddenly abandoned, you almost feel him crumble inside.
At the curtain, the actors look exhausted and shaken by the tale they have just told. Well, so are we. This is what theatre should be. Robert Louis Stevenson’s short story has been exciting us for decades. Don’t miss this fresh, electrifying new take on a man who wanted to “change the face of our science.”
by Julia Sandford
FIVE STARS
at The Merchant Adventurer’s Hall, York
Julia Sandford lives in Bridlington with her husband. After a spell in acting, she has been writing art, film, and theatre reviews for thirty years.
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