Review: Jekyll and Hyde(ish) – Latitude Festival

Take three companies renowned for comic theatre, one lively festival audience and a late night slot and you’ve got the ingredients for something rather special.

The Lyric Hammersmith, Spymonkey and Peepolykus join forces to present Joel Horwood’s Jekyll and Hyde(ish), and adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic tale. Though you’ve not seen anything quite like this adaptation before.

Created especially for Latitude, this irreverent look at the tale sees tongues firmly planted in cheek as the team send up both the story and theatre itself.

Jekyll’s wife is keen to claim her inheritance after her husband walked out into an air-raid but needs a death certificate first. An investigator tries to follow the trail of Jekyll, en-route meeting Jekyll’s dark, scooter riding, alter ego, a manic landlady, his wife and an assortment of other wild and over the top characters.

There’s an anarchic feel to the piece but behind the surface chaos is a tightly drilled structure, while there is a running joke about an actress forgetting her lines, each moves is carefully choreographed to give the impression of mania but within carefully constructed rules. Performances keep just the right side of total anarchy and there are some delightfully observed physical comedy moments.

The Latitude festival gives the rare opportunity to catch a performance twice within a couple of days and its impressive to note the development the piece has already undergone. The second showing is already much tighter, extraneous lines have been cut and the comic quota increased. It’s not perfect yet but given the pedigree of the companies involved and the potential shown here, Jekyll and Hyde(ish) will be a show to watch out for in the future.

Photo: Jekyll and Hyde(ish) by Ryan Morgan