Jekyll & Hyde: A Specimen

Scottish Storytelling Centre
High Street, Royal Mile, Edinburgh
7pm
£6.00

Jekyll and Hyde: A Specimen brings Stevenson’s tale to the modern day and sets it in Edinburgh – a city of contrasts and duality, glamour and shadows, as Edinburgh-born Stevenson well knew. Played by two young Scottish actors (Gavin Paul, Duncan Edwards) in a direct, spare dramatic style, the powerful piece reinterprets the moral complexities and human dilemmas of Stevenson’s book and challenges us to explore its relevance today.

Fast-paced wit, an energetic delivery and glimpses into the gritty realities of life in modern Edinburgh create the context for a radical re-telling of the Jekyll and Hyde story which keeps Stevenson’s elements of chilling suspense and ‘whodunnit’, but also brings out very real contemporary questions. Drug-taking, hedonism, science and power, success and the human struggle to establish a moral identity within oneself are all contained in the shadows and dark places of Donald Smith’s interpretation of Stevenson’s characters.

The hard-hitting piece is a distillation of Stevenson’s storytelling mastery and an energising example of where storytelling meets theatre today.