Jekyll and Hyde, again and again
Today I think I came the closest to seeing Jekyll and Hyde done as I want it to be done. I’ve always been attracted to the story, and aside from the novel (which I always felt held only the kernel of the story, a story Stevenson wasn’t willing or able to pursue) I’ve seen the versions with Spencer Tracey, Mary Reilly (horrible film and novel-I’m sorry, Malkovich!Hyde is really hot), heard the Anthony Warlow version of the musical, and very much appreciated the Moffat Jekyll miniseries from a couple years ago, which at the time came the closest to the ambiguity I feel is most interesting about Jekyll’s search. The miniseries fails in a couple of points, none of which is the performance of James Nesbitt at the center, but otherwise pushed a lot of my buttons where this story is concerned.
Part of what I love about this story-which Stevenson didn’t really touch, as far as I recall-is the fact that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person. This is obvious, of course, but so many versions make it black and white, and there’s an underlying assumption that Hyde is Bad and Jekyll is Good. Whereas, even if we accept that binary as the underlying theme of the story, Jekyll cannot possibly be Good. Jekyll is Both, the self before division, and what’s always interested me most is his repression, his insistence (at least publicly) that Hyde is not part of him, and the dialogue between the two selves. (You can see why Jekyll worked for me in many ways.)
What the production at the ACT in Seattle did was interesting because it addressed the ambiguity directly, in a way that commented upon the original text without seeming to be imposed from the outside. There were six actors total: one for Jekyll, one woman playing Elizabeth (a new character), and four who played Utterson, Poole, Sir Danvers, Lanyon, and various bystanders, detectives and inspectors. Those four (one of whom was a woman) also all played Hyde, at various times or, at times of great strife within Jekyll/Hyde, simultaneously. Everyone but Elizabeth was dressed exactly the same, in a rather nondescript grey suit, with Hyde denoted by a black hat, red waistcoat, and cape with yellow lining.
Most versions after the original insert a woman (usually two, for obvious reasons) to interact with Jekyll and/or Hyde and demonstrate for a third party their dual nature. What I hadn’t seen before was Hyde’s lover, Elizabeth. This was not very successfully rendered in the play, for while the idea was intriguing and made sense in the context of how they formulated Hyde, the writing was such that her transition from fear to attraction was too swift and without much cause. Even so, it is a unique approach, and highlights the difference in how writer Jeffrey Hatcher viewed the original material:
Jekyll and Hyde isn’t about Good and Evil. It’s about intellect and feeling, sense and sensibility, the conscious and unconscious. It’s about grey areas rather than binaries. And part of Jekyll’s original problem, the reason he won’t ever succeed, is that he won’t accept this, on multiple levels. He won’t accept 1) that anything Hyde contains could possibly be Good (or at the very worst, indifferent) or 2) that human nature isn’t one or the other, a question between two halves. What gratified me immensely about this adaptation is that Utterson, already a storyteller in the original, becomes the voice of criticism when he calls Jekyll on this false dichotomy and tells him that he doesn’t see a man as having two minds, but an infinite set of possibilities. Jekyll is set up from the beginning as a champion of reason, of science, of compassion for the sake of the Greater Good, and Hyde is not a creature of evil so much as impulse. Not every one of those impulses is bad, and it is Hyde who is capable of loving-or at least caring about-Elizabeth as a person. It is Jekyll who, in the end, is driven to evil deeds because of the decisions he has made both as himself and as Hyde. And Jekyll is forced to accept, in some measure, responsibility for the part of him that is Hyde.
All of this is reinforced, too, by the ability of a stage play (and the multiple Hydes) to show Jekyll’s subconscious whispering to him as he speaks to his friends, to the authorities, to Elizabeth. His inner struggle can be made explicit, and the unity of Jekyll/Hyde is maintained. The production is not perfect-there were cinematically-inspired “foley” effects that were more distracting than effective, and the multiple-Hyde thing was not always necessary-but it’s definitely the nearest I’ve seen to being what I want/need from this story, and what I have never before received. It’s one of those stories I love for what it could be, rather than what people usually do with it, and this new version is definitely far more in line with my vision than anything else I’ve seen.
But I’m curious about your Jekyll and Hyde experiences, if you like the story. What are your favorites? If you are drawn to it, why? And what haven’t you seen done that you’d like to see? If you like it, or even if you don’t, why do you think we (as a culture) keep coming back to it time and again? And how is it there’s still something to discover in it, as above? (And maybe that last question is actually the answer to the one before it.)
Part of what I love about this story-which Stevenson didn’t really touch, as far as I recall-is the fact that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person. This is obvious, of course, but so many versions make it black and white, and there’s an underlying assumption that Hyde is Bad and Jekyll is Good. Whereas, even if we accept that binary as the underlying theme of the story, Jekyll cannot possibly be Good. Jekyll is Both, the self before division, and what’s always interested me most is his repression, his insistence (at least publicly) that Hyde is not part of him, and the dialogue between the two selves. (You can see why Jekyll worked for me in many ways.)
What the production at the ACT in Seattle did was interesting because it addressed the ambiguity directly, in a way that commented upon the original text without seeming to be imposed from the outside. There were six actors total: one for Jekyll, one woman playing Elizabeth (a new character), and four who played Utterson, Poole, Sir Danvers, Lanyon, and various bystanders, detectives and inspectors. Those four (one of whom was a woman) also all played Hyde, at various times or, at times of great strife within Jekyll/Hyde, simultaneously. Everyone but Elizabeth was dressed exactly the same, in a rather nondescript grey suit, with Hyde denoted by a black hat, red waistcoat, and cape with yellow lining.
Most versions after the original insert a woman (usually two, for obvious reasons) to interact with Jekyll and/or Hyde and demonstrate for a third party their dual nature. What I hadn’t seen before was Hyde’s lover, Elizabeth. This was not very successfully rendered in the play, for while the idea was intriguing and made sense in the context of how they formulated Hyde, the writing was such that her transition from fear to attraction was too swift and without much cause. Even so, it is a unique approach, and highlights the difference in how writer Jeffrey Hatcher viewed the original material:
Jekyll and Hyde isn’t about Good and Evil. It’s about intellect and feeling, sense and sensibility, the conscious and unconscious. It’s about grey areas rather than binaries. And part of Jekyll’s original problem, the reason he won’t ever succeed, is that he won’t accept this, on multiple levels. He won’t accept 1) that anything Hyde contains could possibly be Good (or at the very worst, indifferent) or 2) that human nature isn’t one or the other, a question between two halves. What gratified me immensely about this adaptation is that Utterson, already a storyteller in the original, becomes the voice of criticism when he calls Jekyll on this false dichotomy and tells him that he doesn’t see a man as having two minds, but an infinite set of possibilities. Jekyll is set up from the beginning as a champion of reason, of science, of compassion for the sake of the Greater Good, and Hyde is not a creature of evil so much as impulse. Not every one of those impulses is bad, and it is Hyde who is capable of loving-or at least caring about-Elizabeth as a person. It is Jekyll who, in the end, is driven to evil deeds because of the decisions he has made both as himself and as Hyde. And Jekyll is forced to accept, in some measure, responsibility for the part of him that is Hyde.
All of this is reinforced, too, by the ability of a stage play (and the multiple Hydes) to show Jekyll’s subconscious whispering to him as he speaks to his friends, to the authorities, to Elizabeth. His inner struggle can be made explicit, and the unity of Jekyll/Hyde is maintained. The production is not perfect-there were cinematically-inspired “foley” effects that were more distracting than effective, and the multiple-Hyde thing was not always necessary-but it’s definitely the nearest I’ve seen to being what I want/need from this story, and what I have never before received. It’s one of those stories I love for what it could be, rather than what people usually do with it, and this new version is definitely far more in line with my vision than anything else I’ve seen.
But I’m curious about your Jekyll and Hyde experiences, if you like the story. What are your favorites? If you are drawn to it, why? And what haven’t you seen done that you’d like to see? If you like it, or even if you don’t, why do you think we (as a culture) keep coming back to it time and again? And how is it there’s still something to discover in it, as above? (And maybe that last question is actually the answer to the one before it.)