How appearances can deceive. Jekyll and Hyde is an intriguing collaboration between British-based Red Shift and Chung Ying theatre company from Hong Kong. Director and writer Jonathan Holloway has cleverly chosen to adapt Robert Louis Stevenson’s great story about duality for this dual enterprise. Designer Neil Irish has made the stage look ravishing – and ravished. Thirty red lanterns dangle glowing from the ceiling. Grids on the floor give up a lattice of gold light and puffs of fog. Jon Nicholls’s soundscape, with its eerie winds and whispers, is accompanied by an enticing onstage accordionist/clarinettist.
Everything seems set for ignition. Then it fizzles. Not because of the device which makes Jekyll/Hyde a woman escaping from trauma – though Olivia Winteringham has only to switch between stateliness and vamp. But because of an unnecessary framing device, and stilted acting which makes everyone look like puppets. One of the most disturbing of all stories is made torpid. Yet the next project looks enticing: what could be better for this collaboration than A Tale of Two Cities?
