MONTREAL GAZETTE
Theatre review: Decorum wins out over wanton wickedness in Persephone’s Jekyll and Hyde
by Jim burke


If the current season from young company Persephone Productions has a consistent theme, it’s that of warring impulses within the same body.

Their musical Spring Awakening put a collection of hormonal school kids through the agonies of confusing sexual urges. In The Nisei and the Narnauks, it was Canada itself that was torn between civilized niceness and destructive callousness in its treatment of Japanese-heritage citizens. This duality of nature is a theme that leaps out snarling and slavering in the last show of Persephone’s season, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

In Christopher Moore’s sober production, the stage is bare to begin with, save for a blood-red door — reflecting the opening scene of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella — which is then wheeled around by the cast for the various locations. There’s also a sparingly-used lab raised on one side of the stage and lit, by Beecher Pinet, with the moody luridness of a 1930s Universal monster movie.

As drawn by playwright and screenwriter Jeffrey Hatcher (he wrote the Keira Knightley vehicle The Duchess), this Doctor Jekyll initially faces his distorted image in the feral Mr. Hyde, a mirroring emphasized by the resemblance of Alex Goldrich, who plays the good doctor, to Lucas Chartier-Dessert’s child-stomping Hyde. They share a similarly imposing stature, clipped facial hair, and elegant cut of late Victorian, early Edwardian suits (designed by Melanie Michaud).

But in a twist to the usual doppelgänger duel, Hatcher’s adaptation then fragments Mr. Hyde into a creature of many faces, dividing the part among four actors, including a woman (Vanessa Carter). Duality, it turns out, isn’t the be-all-and-end-all of the story in Hatcher’s view. His Hyde is a representation of the many moods of Jekyll’s repressed id, one of them (James Harrington) even quite noble. Here we get Hyde in love, as he falls for Allie Shapiro’s spirited chambermaid Elizabeth. When he isn’t pouring acid onto the face of a prostitute or frenziedly pulverizing the bones of a frail old gent, this Hyde might even be capable of doing the right thing. Jekyll, on the other hand, though upright and attractively humane in Goldrich’s assured performance, can be a bit of a bounder. Hatcher’s script suggests that the urge to defend one’s honour and propriety can be even more murderous than primal beastliness.


All of which much-needed variety to the overly-familiar material keeps things thematically interesting. What doesn’t quite come across is the sickening, spidery sense of evil of, say, Rouben Mamoulian’s 1932 film version, or indeed Stevenson’s original. This is partly to do with Hatcher’s script that, for all its inventiveness, gets stuck in a groove of plodding exposition more suited to small-screen costume drama.

But it’s also partly to do with the production. It’s crisp and narratively clear, but it could do with more spark: there’s little sense of the grisly fun that’s often detectable in Hatcher’s script. The stiffness to some of the playing can’t entirely be put down to Victorian reserve, and the literalness of the props — including a bloodied-up manikin for an autopsy scene — further imprisons the production in dour naturalism.

Occasionally, things burst into life, as when Goldrich delivers an impassioned speech about the iniquities of slum life or rages about being the victim of identity theft. And there’s a genuinely funny moment when Martin Law’s Hyde, intent on mischief, bursts through the red door into a park and declares “Springtime!”

It’s a brief reminder of the wanton and exhilarating wickedness beneath the decorum. The production, though consistently engaging, could do with a bigger swig of that particular potion.

MONTREALRAMPAGE.COM
Theatre: Classic Tale Told Anew with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
By Sinj Karan


The evil that is inherent to the human condition raises its head at every given instance. There is little that needs to trigger it, nudge it to show its ugly head. But how does one tame that evil, how do we contain the damage that can be caused when that evil takes control? This question has been the subject of debate, analysis and research for as long as human societies have existed. Then came a doctor, who created a tincture believing that if we were able to locate and confine this evil, its force would be easily contained. If we were able to separate this evil from the rest of who we are, then placing it in shackles would be easy.

The famed novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from the 19th century Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson is brought to Montreal’s Mainline Theatre by director Christopher Moore. It’s the Jekyll-Hyde story that has been synonymous with our good-evil dichotomy for over a hundred years.

Moore takes a 2008 adaptation of the story (by Jeffery Hatcher) where this old world tale has multiple actors playing Hyde: directed at exploring different sides of him and pushing him into different human situations, including romance. With a group of varyingly talented actors, the play is entertaining for the most part and with some success presents the dilemma of our essential human nature.

The play begins with Hyde accidentally bumping into a woman, as he rushes down a street while making his way back home. The woman falls to the side and Hyde tramples her. A crowd gathers and a Mr. Enfield and Mr. Utterson (Dr. Jekyll’s lawyer) chase Hyde and demand that he pay reparations to avoid a scandal. Hyde very reluctantly invites them back to his apartment and presents a cheque to give to the woman. As a guarantee of payment, he presents a letter signed by Dr. Henry Jekyll warranting for Hyde. This sets into a motion a chain of events involving intrigue, secrets and a trail of diabolical acts that Hyde leaves behind him.

Jekyll is known in the medical circles of London as one who questions the status quo and has no tolerance for irrational or religious beliefs that drive medical diagnosis. He runs a laboratory of his own at home where he experiments and plays with tinctures. Unknown to the world he has this secret life that he has been leading. While the social circles of London have stories going around of this mysterious man who walks the streets at night and leaves behind him a trail of injury, blood and all forms of violence, no one knows who he is.

The letter signed by Jekyll in Hyde’s possession gets Utterson thinking and he asks Jekyll how a person of such degraded standing found favor with him. While the play obviously gives enough room for Hyde’s character to flourish and play out through different actors, Jekyll’s character suffers and comes across as one-dimensional, merely reacting to the news of Hyde’s actions. While Alex Goldrich pours his heart into playing Jekyll, his platform is limited and he doesn’t have half the stage time he should.

The use of different actors to play Hyde works well and brings excitement and an element of surprise. The audience is always left guessing where Hyde might be lurking; he might jump out with a bang anytime. Actor James Harrington’s “acting” of Hyde comes across as such and it’s Lucas Chartier-Dennert who brings out the dread that Hyde embodies. Chartier-Dennert shines whenever he is on stage and plays Utterson just as convincingly.

The introduction of Hyde’s love interest Elizabeth (played by Allie Shapiro) is the weakest link as the actors Shapiro and Harrington struggle to find chemistry. But it is an interesting element to try and humanize Hyde, the evil monster who doesn’t know how to love. Martin Law as both Hyde and Jekyll’s rival medical practitioner does well in his supporting role. However, the artistic choice to constantly move the “red” door around the stage eventually gets disorienting.

High on entertainment value, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde should be seen for its reminder that our essential goodness is only a split second away from our innate desire to falter.

Persephone Productions - Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde Review
By Nic turcott and Matt Xhignesse

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CANADIAN JEWISH NEWS
Play explores opposing poles of human nature
by Heather Solomon-Bowden

Allie Shapiro plays a character that was never in Robert Louis Stevenson’s original novella. 

But as Elizabeth Ann Jelkes in the upcoming Persephone Productions adaptation Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, she is the one who recognizes that people cannot be purely good or only evil. It’s a hard concept to swallow when one thinks of certain historical figures. 

However, Judaism has long recognized that all people must balance their inclinations between yetzer hara(the inclination to do evil) and yetzer hatov (to do good). The choice to go either way is a matter of free will, and this is what playwright Jeffrey Hatcher explores at Mainline Theatre, 3997 St. Laurent Blvd., April 16 to 26. 

“The play asks if everybody has an infinite number of sides in different moments. It has more to do with who  we choose to be, rather than what our nature is,” says director Chris Moore. “A lot of it is about compromise and grey areas.”

The action is set in 1883 London around the time of the novella’s writing. Victorian England was a nest of vices buried under the prim mores of the time. 

Dr. Henry Jekyll (Alex Goldrich) decides to eradicate his inner lusts and violent thoughts with a mixture of drugs. Unfortunately, he releases rather than removes his darker side, played by the various other cast members, as they double up on their primary roles of colleague, attorney, witness and butler. 

In this way, the playwright does not have both sides embodied in one actor, as is traditional. Jekyll and Hyde instead come up against one another in physical struggles that Moore choreographs. “Jekyll and Hyde place themselves as adversaries because neither of them wants to admit that they have elements of the other, which is probably at the core of most conflicts,” says Goldrich. 

Shapiro is the romantic interest of the doppelgangers and finds herself in the midst of their clashes, as they literally sweep her off her feet.

“She’s the one character who truly sees past how Jekyll perceives Hyde. Jekyll sees good and evil as black and white, but she and Hyde are living examples that it’s not always the case. Humans are complex,” she says. 

Shapiro comes to the role after having portrayed a sort of female Jekyll and Hyde in the person of Mme Arthenice in a Marivaux compilation titled The Islands of Love, staged by Concordia University in 2013.

“My character was an upper-class lady who transforms into a savage,” says Shapiro, who graduated in 2014 with a BFA in theatre and a minor in psychology. 

Just a year out of theatre school, the 23-year-old has made her home in Montreal, travelling back to the United States for holidays to see her parents in Stamford, Conn. 

She most recently modelled the title role of Rose in Rose Quartz after her screen idol Lauren Bacall for Raise the Stakes/Jubilee Theatre and performed the small but key role of Margaret in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing at Montreal’s Théâtre Ste-Catherine. 

Goldrich, 35, is a Maritimer from Saint John, N.B.

Moore has been artistic director of Persephone since taking over in 2013 from Gabrielle Soskin, whom he directed in Martha Blum/Geoffrey Ursell’s touching Holocaust drama The Walnut Tree. 

His co-direction with Soskin of Spring Awakening went on to raves last October as a Centaur Theatre Brave New Looks production. “When I chose Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, it grabbed me from the outset. It becomes very suspenseful and intense,” Moore says. 

He is continuing the company’s mandate to employ emerging theatre artists, and Shapiro and Goldrich are grateful for the opportunity. Tickets for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are available at 514-849-3378 or at www.persephoneproductions.org.

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Preview interview between Davyn Ryall and actor, Allie Shapiro
CLICK HERE