 |  |  |  |  |  | |||||||||||||
|
archive |
about
us |
links |
contact |
current | ||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Dr
Jekyll and Mr Hyde Group: Ironduke |
|
James Panton | |
|
It is refreshing to come across a high school group at the Fringe performing something other than a musical. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is an ambitious attempt by such a group both to return to the classic text of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and at the same time to present the story on a minimalist stage through difficult and often stylised performance. There are moments when this really works. The players use a trolley in the middle of the stage as their only prop, and they use it to good effect. In the first half of the piece, when we discover that the distinguished doctor and the troublemaking Hyde are indeed one in the same man, Hyde jumps onto Jekyll’s back and the latter is forced down under the weight of the evil monster his science has given birth to. But there are other elements of the piece which are less successful. In particular, the vial of serum Jekyll drinks to transform into Hyde in the original is replaced with a hypodermic needle. Presumably this is an attempt to make Jekyll’s chemical induced transformation more relevant to a young Edinburgh audience. It is, however, a rather annoying and unnecessary adaptation in what is an otherwise challenging work - a work whose very nature assumes that both its players and its audience are able to abstract themselves from their everyday lives to inhabit an other-worldly Edinburgh. This is an absorbing play by a young cast that shows, at times, a sophisticated grasp of theatre. It would be interesting to see the result had the students themselves been given a freer hand in the direction of the piece.
4
August to 17 August.
| |