Hatcher's Eight-Actor Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Premieres at San Jose Rep May 10
By Kenneth Jones
29 Apr 2008
The California leg of the world premiere co-production of Jeffrey Hatcher's theatrically playful, small-cast Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde plays San Jose Repertory Theatre May 10-June 8.
Opening is May 16. The production launched earlier this year in Phoenix and Tuscon, AZ. Arizona Theatre Company commissioned the project and co-produces with San Jose Rep.
Hatcher's work for the stage includes A Picasso, Three Viewings and Murderers as well as the popular stage version of the bestseller, Tuesdays With Morrie, and the librettos to Never Gonna Dance and the hit bio musical Ella.
"Against the backdrop of Victorian London, the respectable Dr. Jekyll has begun to display alarmingly erratic behavior," according to San Jose Rep. "At the same time, a brutal figure haunts the city's streets, committing assault and murder under the cloak of darkness and dismal London fog."
The "timeless tale about the good doctor, Henry Jekyll, and his doppelganger, Edward Hyde, is brought to the stage in a fiercely theatrical new adaptation" directed by Arizona Theatre Company's artistic director, David Ira Goldstein.
In Hatcher's re-telling of this classic tale, one actor portrays Jekyll and four other actors portray Hyde — "each revealing Hyde's many faces: brutality, sexuality and cruelty."
The play is drawn from the classic 1886 novella by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Playwright Hatcher stated, "In my version the roles are somewhat reversed, as are some aspects of Jekyll and Hyde themselves. One of the arguments I've never quite believed — and I suspect Stevenson didn't believe it either — is that Henry Jekyll is wholly good while Edward Hyde is wholly evil. I'm trying to have some fun with the notion that Jekyll and Hyde play a cat-and-mouse game with each other, and with the question of just who we should be rooting for."
The cast of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde includes Carrie Paff (Edward Hyde, Poole), Mark Anderson Phillips (Edward Hyde, Dr. H. K. Lanyon), Ken Ruta (Edward Hyde, Gabriel Utterson), R. Hamilton Wright (Dr. Henry Jekyll), Stephen D'Ambrose (Edward Hyde, Sir Danvers Carew), Anna Bullard (Elizabeth Jelkes), Danielle Perata (Orderly) and Alan Kaiser (Orderly).
The creative team includes Kent Dorsey (set designer), Anna Oliver (costume designer), Dawn Chiang (lighting designer), Roberta Carlson (composer), Brian Jerome Peterson (sound designer) and Ken Merckx (fight director). The production stage manager is Laxmi Kumaran.
San Jose Rep is at 101 Paseo de San Antonio. For information visit www.SJRep.com or by call (408) 367-7255.
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