Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (NHB Modern Plays)

Stage Version

Robert Louis Stevenson

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781780017471
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

A superb adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's famous story of the unassuming Dr Jekyll and his dark alter-ego Mr Hyde.

This version, first performed at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1996, is a revised and partially re-written version of the adaptation premiered by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican Theatre, London, in 1991.

'a single actor tackles both roles... His transformation from mild-mannered, myopic doctor to the fiendish Mr Hyde is merely the physical manifestation of the divisions within the Victorian psyche. This thoughtful show goes far beyond melodrama' - Guardian

'urgent, superbly wrought and well-structured' - Observer

'Both a theatrical feast and an intellectual challenge' - Sunday Times

ACT ONE

Scene One

London: a chill and gloomy autumn afternoon. At one side of the stage, GABRIEL JOHN UTTERSON appears; at the other, his cousin RICHARD ENFIELD. UTTERSON is a lawyer in late middle-age, ENFIELD the man of fashion is younger.

ENFIELD. Mr Utterson the lawyer was a man of rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile; Cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary . . . and yet somehow lovable.

UTTERSON looks quizzically over to ENFIELD.

He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theatre,

UTTERSON. had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years.

ENFIELD. His friends were those of his own blood or those whom he had known the longest; his affections,

UTTERSON. like ivy,

ENFIELD. were the growth of time, they implied no aptness in the object.

UTTERSON. Hence, no doubt, the bond that united him to Mr Richard Enfield, his distant kinsman, the well-known man about town.

ENFIELD smiles.

ENFIELD. It was a nut to crack for many, what these two could see in each other or what subject they could find in common. It was reported by those who encountered them on their Sunday walks, that they said nothing, looked singularly dull, and hailed with obvious relief the appearance of a friend. But for all that, the two men put the greatest store by these excursions, and not only set aside occasions of pleasure,

UTTERSON. but even resisted the calls of business,

ENFIELD/UTTERSON. that they might enjoy them uninterrupted.

UTTERSON. It chanced on one of these rambles that their way led them down a dingy by-street in a quiet quarter of London.

ENFIELD. Where the line of frontages was broken by a block of building with a blistered door –

UTTERSON. – bearing in every feature the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence.

ENFIELD. Did you ever remark that door?

UTTERSON. Mr Enfield said.

ENFIELD. It is connected in my mind with a very strange occurrence.

UTTERSON. And what was that? Mr Utterson replied.

ENFIELD. Well, it was this way. It must have been a week or so ago, I was coming home from some place at the end of the world, past twelve on a foggy night, and the streets all empty as a church. Until that is, I was overtaken by a young man of – well, a rather raffish, even primitive appearance, brandishing a cane, who was stomping at a breakneck speed towards the corner, where a wretched waif of ten or twelve or so was standing, selling sorry trifles from a tray.

Between the two men, we begin to sense a third figure.

UTTERSON. I’m sorry, you said ‘young’?

ENFIELD. Yes, no more than twenty-two or three. And then –

UTTERSON. And with a cane?

ENFIELD. Yes, certainly, with a silver top. And then –

UTTERSON. And you said, this corner, and this door?

Slight pause.

ENFIELD. I did. Why do you ask?

UTTERSON. For Mr Utterson the lawyer knew that door, and where it led, and those who dwelt beyond it . . .

ENFIELD. And thus was able to connect his cousin’s story with a malignant chain of circumstance which had begun some months before,

UTTERSON. Of which he was by then but at the doorway of suspicion.

And now we see that the third figure is a little WAIF, with a makeshift tray of paltry things. As she speaks, the lights on ENFIELD and UTTERSON slowly fade to darkness.

THE WAIF. Lights! Box of lights! Fine cotton thread! Best lampblack!

She ‘sees’ a MAN approach, in the darkness, and turns to one side.

Sir, a box of lights? or a tin of lampblack? Might you be needing of a ha’penny’s of black today?

We imagine the MAN crosses in front of her as if to pass on.

’Cos I’ll be honest with you, sir, I needs the ha’penny.

We imagine the MAN turns back and starts to walk towards the girl.

So I would take it awful kindly, sir. If you could see your way sir. Even just a stick of kindling or a twist of tea.

She takes a match from a match box and prepares to light it.

Or a box of lights, sir?

She strikes the match. We see the moustached face of a SMALL MAN, leering through the darkness.

Light?

Then, suddenly, from the other side, a shaft of light from an opening door. A SECOND MAN entering.

SECOND MAN. What’s this? What’s going on?

The WAIF turns to the SECOND MAN.

THE WAIF. Oh, Uncle Henry.

SECOND MAN. What on earth –

SMALL MAN. Oh, rats.

As the SMALL MAN leaves the WAIF we hear a WOMAN’s voice.

WOMAN. Charles.

The SMALL MAN pulls open heavy curtains, flooding the stage with light.

SMALL MAN. Well, it’s all spoilt.

Scene Two

Now we pick up the situation: we are in the drawing room of a country house, towards the end of a late summer afternoon. A central alcove has been turned into a little theatrical booth, hung with curtains. To the side, partly concealed by the arch of the alcove, a maid stands on a chair with an oil-lamp, masked to throw light on the WAIF, whose real name is LUCY. Her 13-year-old brother CHARLES played the SMALL MAN – in cloak, top hat and false moustache, all of them too big for him; the now descending maid is 16-year-old ANNIE; and the rehearsal was being watched by CHARLES’s mother KATHERINE, who is in her early middle age. The curtains that CHARLES has pulled back expose french windows; we see that the room is untidy, full of toys, and contains a piano, a portrait photograph of two children – CHARLES and LUCY – and a ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Original Production
• Epigraph
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Characters
• Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information