From the novella by Robert Louis Stevenson

Adapted and Directed by Jennifer Dick

In its history, the Glasgow Botanics has long echoed with sonnets of Shakespeare throughout the summers; until now. But in the canny decision to move and acknowledge the absence of the Bard, the Botanics instead charter the melodramatic cobbles of a Victorian novella for this season’s rich gardens.

And while the camp eccentricities of Oscar Wilde may be volleyed out to the masses in the open air just around the corner, inside the Kibble Palace, a battle for the nature of humanity wages with Jennifer Dick’s take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s scalpel slice at the humdrum and hypocrisy of Victorian high-society; complete with snake-skin loafers. Oh yes.

An intense, blood-spurting and pumping ninety minutes, Jekyll and Hyde, under Dick’s helm, achieves a remarkable turnabout and feels remarkably at ease within the settings of the Bard’s usual domain. There’s still Stevenson’s violence, grit, and bared teeth, but Dick’s rhetoric strips away the prose of the novella and begins to drip the action and drama of the production throughout gateway character, Stephanie McGregor as a purposeful and ethical Gabriel Utterson, our moral compass through this stint within the darkness.

McGregor plays the role of Utterson as a Bard themselves, a storyteller, always within the action but seemingly detached as they reflect the audiences’ eyes as we peer into the perverse tale. It’s striking and demonstrates a strict control of the entire scene and body – even as Utterson is on the back foot, terrified, the breathing and posture all exude an aura of a performer who grasps the story at its root and does so without a shred of effort being exposed. It may well be McGregor’s finest performance to date (excluding Snow White, naturally).

They’re aided by two tremendously terrifying performances from Henry IV star Sam Stopford as a conniving, verminous Mr Hyde and Adam Donaldson, who takes all the calmness of his recent Brutus, and truly allows it to unhinge itself. Cannily, Dick treats the performers as two separate entities, as opposed to the usual differing sides of the same person. It extends the scope of expression and movement and enables Donaldson and Stopford the ability to gradually merge, the impact more severe and severe. A departure from the usual hulking brute of a monster, though the movement direction does offer glimpses of Hyde’s supernatural brutality and strength.

Gradually, the pair merge, their spoken word channelled into a singular rhythm, their touch and intentions almost erogenous, deeply personal and intimate. We feel intrusive as Hyde and Jekyll reach a demanding emotional pitch, the brute and sophistication the same, a powerful reinforcement of the wise and pertinent nature of Stevenson’s intention, and Dick’s understanding of the story. Initially, we do feel sorrow for Donaldson, who champions a very mortal and relatable Jekyll, serving the duality of man with strength in allowing vulnerability and weaknesses to exude.

A little too often though the levels of seating do strip back the view for the audience, the dexterity and command in voice ripples over these sightline issues, but so much is spoken in Stopford’s expressive eyes that it’s a shame to render them limited to only the front row. A small gripe, but one which deprives a full audience of a clear view, and can at times cause a touch of tennis neck going between the performers.

Dick’s Jekyll and Hyde’s pleas for the soul begin to overpower the hopes of social advancement: Utterson’s moral quandaries raise the persistent reminder that as the greater our light shines, so too must the shadows cast within us grow. In a world of the prim and proper, there is inevitably a return to the primal and stripping of the façade. Aligning Stevenson’s story with the respectability and prestige of the Bard in the Botanics, this second half of the season matches the initial in terms of quality, but certainly serves up a decadent, delicious, and even deplorable helping of something different, yet altogether familiar.