REVIEW: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, People’s Theatre, Newcastle
I don’t know what Ryan Smith does with himself during the day but people should be cutting him some slack.
Tearing around growling and roaring all evening can take it out of a man, as Dr Henry Jekyll would have told you had he not been a product of Robert Louis Stevenson’s fertile imagination.
Jekyll’s malignant alter ego, Mr Hyde, has in the past been played by a separate actor but here the whole exhausting burden falls on Mr Smith who did a great job on opening night.
It’s not all growling and roaring, of course. There are the sudden mood swings to account for too.
The Jekyll we first meet is benign Uncle Henry to his sister’s adoring children, Lucy and Charles (Silvia Mosquera and Madeleine Egner).
But the black eyepatch sported by sister Katherine Urquart (Natalie Plunga) and the dark and forbidding portrait of their dad on the wall hint at darkness past and future.
And it isn’t long before the aura of geniality begins to dissipate. Uncle Henry isn’t quite what he seems. A scary looking individual is seen entering and exiting the Jekyll home which becomes implicated in some nasty and violent crimes.
Annie Loder (nicely played by Jenny Davison) senses something malign but she’s a servant and of little account.
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Jekyll’s close friends and even the butler (a lady butler is this production, played by Holly Stamp) are slow on the uptake.
There’s an excuse for the latter, knowing who’s paying the wages, but bearded, respectable Gabriel Utterson (Jim Boylan) seems utterly clueless and his clubby companions are not much better.
Mr Hyde’s accent, straight from the most guttural end of the Gorbals, offers some mitigation.
Most of those going to see this seasonal spooky offering – direction attributed to Andy Aiken, Helen Doyle and the company - will know that it doesn’t offer a happy ending.
But the smile on Ryan Smith’s face and the exhalation of breath at the ‘curtain’ call (the People’s doesn’t have actual curtains) spoke volumes.
This is a production that makes demands on its cast and its stage crew too, the impressive Victorian interiors manifesting on stage only with a lot of shoving and heaving.
In the opening scene, when Utterson and mutual friend Mr Enfield (Conor McCahill) reflect on disturbing events outside the Jekyll front door, I thought for a while the door was going to steal it.
It seemed reluctant to budge. Some gremlin limbering up for Halloween, perhaps.
But a grim tale first told at the time of Jack the Ripper, and retold in David Edgar’s stage adaptation from the 1990s, ended in applause and the reassuring sight of Ryan Smith looking content after an evening of physical and emotional turmoil.
Let's hope he makes it through the run which ends on Saturday, October 26. Tickets from The People's Theatre website.