Playwright: adapted by Frank Galati from the novel by Robert Louis
Stevenson
At: City Lit Theatre at Edgewater Presbyterian Church, 1020 W. Bryn
Mawr Ave.
Phone: 773-293-3682; $25
Runs through: Nov. 5
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
A perennial theme in the science-fiction/horror genre is that of a fundamentally blameless human being discovering that he is no longer what he thought himself to be. But an additional theme explored by Victorian authors was that of technology as a gateway to megalomanic destruction, explored by H.G. Wells in The Invisible Man and by Robert Louis Stevenson in his fable of a respectable physician who devises a means of separating what Freud would later call the id and superego—not only psychologically, but physically. For a time, the upstanding Dr. Jekyll enjoys the freedom provided by an alias, dubbed Mr. Hyde, but increasingly his 'shadow' comes to dominate his, uh, better half.
The chief problem faced by those essaying to recount this story onstage is the reluctance of readers in 1886 to immerse themselves too deeply into the inner workings of a madman. In keeping with his age's literary tastes, Stevenson structures his yarn as a detective procedural, composed of observations by spectators safely removed from dangerous temptation ( though each questions himself in the course of discovery, lest he likewise fall prey to hubris ) . But Frank Galati, a pioneer in applying the principles of Paul Sills' Story Theatre to dramatic narrative, deftly parcels out the author's words among a diversity of reporters, beginning with a legal clerk conducting research on the 'strange case,' and gradually expanding to the involved parties speaking, at various moments, to us and to one another.
This technique, while consolidating the necessary plot information, requires razor-sharp characterizations choreography if we are to remain securely anchored in its multidimensional setting. But director Terry McCabe, his cast—led by George Seegebrecht as the man, literally, of two minds, and Will Schutz as his bewildered associate—never waver from their universe, wearing their 19th-century speech ( kudos to Clare C. Hane's dialect instruction ) and morality as comfortably as if tailored yesterday. For while specific issues may change, the tensions over those things that 'man was not meant to know' and the wisdom—or folly—of their pursuit continue to shape our social attitudes.