Notes on the adaptation by Neil Bartlett

Notes on the adaptation from Neil Bartlett

The playwright, Neil Bartlett, has provided extensive notes in his adaptation of the text, which may be useful for teachers or students in studying the production.

Picturing the space The space that has been in my head while writing this script has been a nineteenth-century lecture/anatomy theatre, with tiers of raised seats. If you google the Anatomy Theatre of Edinburgh University – for instance. A scene of medical dissections and lectures - but also a kind of courtroom for the giving of evidence – and also … a kind of theatre. It's important that THE GENTLEMEN are above and behind the women. That they can be seen looming over them. It is also important that the acting out of the story never stops for a scene change; everything is done swiftly, with sound and light and storytelling. As you'll see, the floor of the stage is essentially that of the Doctor's hospital ward – but it also becomes a street - a dining room - a Soho den - The paraphernalia/props required by the story are all medical; screens, gurneys, white coats, beakers, pills, clipboards with notes, a lecturer's blackboard … The period is nineteenth century; the novel dates from 1886. However, there should be electronic sound and possibly even microphones for the chorus (either visible or invisible, according to taste). The tricks and transformations An audience comes to this story expecting transformation … so; let's give it to them! Also in my mind while writing this adaptation has been the idea of a magician's transformation cabinet – one of those big boxes with doors that get wheeled, spun round to show you there's nothing round the back - and inside which people can then be made to appear and disappear and even transform inside while being apparently locked inside. This idea was inspired by a quote I found from Robert Louis Stevenson where he says “all I first dreamed about Dr Jekyll was that a man was being pressed into a cabinet, when he swallowed a drug and changed into another being”. The trickery involved is actually quite simple – a spot of doubling, a spot of misdirection and clear use of costume quick-changes. But it should add a lot of tension - and pleasure - to the staging. I have also, as you will see, used the idea of a chorus as a basic way of embodying and amplifying Dr Jekyll's famous two-bodied-ness. This should give plenty of sinister spectacle – and also communicate the idea that “doubleness” might be lurking inside anybody's body …

Sounds The microphones for the men should allow their voices to be disembodied – and distorted, if required. Voices in our heads. Also; singing. I've written in two kinds of acapella singing for the chorus; hymns, and music hall. In other words, in keeping with the theme of split personalities, lurid nineteenth century piety – and its flipside, the dark humour of the music- hall. I've suggested the hymn When I survey the wondrous cross, because the tune is great, but also because the lyrics are so shame-obsessed – just right for Jekyll-as-Hyde. In this draft, for a music-hall theme I've used “Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner” - a jaunty little ditty to commit murder by! In counterpoint to those period “Victorian” sources, my gothinfluenced headphone-playlist while writing this draft has included Siouxsie Sioux (‘The Scream’); Bauhaus (‘Bela Lugosi's Dead’) and Bowie's ‘Blackstar’ (especially the ‘Lazarus’ video). So feel free to let rip with the electronica in your head.

The timeline of this production I have condensed the timeline of the original. Here is the timeline of this version: • Dr Jekyll does not consider himself a hypocrite, but he does lead two separate lives, the private (as a man with the normal tastes of his class in alcohol and sex workers) and the public (as a distinguished doctor and philanthropist) • In middle age, in the course of his medical enquiries,

Dr Jekyll makes a momentous discovery. • He is now able to lead his double life without either shame or fear because he now has two separate bodies. • To facilitate this double life, he makes a new will; sets up an establishment in Soho; gives his alter-ego Hyde a cheque book and a back door key (so that he has access to the necessary drugs to turn back in Jekyll at the end of each “episode”). • December: the girl; the first accidental challenge to the double life. Hyde gets away by writing a cheque. • Hyde worsens – the extended period of the double life. Jekyll has trouble deflecting the concerns of both Lanyon and

Utterson but manages to keep them both at arm’s length. • The drugs and transformations get harder to manage; there is some blurring of the two identities - but it all works. Nearly a year passes. • October 14th: The murder of Danvers Carew. Hyde is identified as the suspect, and the police trace him to Soho. • The night after the murder; on the run, Hyde tricks

Lanyon into rescuing him, by getting him the drugs that enable him to turn back into Jekyll. • Nov-Dec: after vowing never to take the drugs again, Dr

Jekyll devotes himself to good works. Hyde seems to have disappeared entirely, and the police abandon the hunt for

Carew's murderer. Jekyll is tempted by the pleasures of life as

Mr Hyde but manages to stay on the straight and narrow. • February: The involuntary return of Hyde – in St James Park. • Dr Jekyll shuts himself away. He writes to Utterson asking to be left alone while he tries to sort out his problems. • The last week: he ups his dosage, but the drugs fail. • The last night: Hyde threatens to return and take over. Jekyll, seeking to put an end to Hyde, takes cyanide. However, it is as Hyde that he dies.