Presented by Lung Ha Theatre Company and Drake Music Scotland
In a new play by Morna Pearson inspired by RL Stevenson’s classic story
Edinburgh, 1886; a time of murky, narrow street, scientific innovation and seemingly endless haars – and where the city’s Old and News Towns are separated by more than just the North Bridge.
In the prosperous New Town we meet the Jekyll family. Dr Jekyll longs for just one of his “radical” experiments to go right. His daughter Miriam longs for the right to attend University. Son William is never far from his needlework and wife Jane never far from the bottle.
While seemingly a world away in the Old Town a murky figure known as Hyde roams the moonlit streets. It seems the townsfolk on both sides of the city have ‘trouble’ adhearing to the strict rules and values of Victorian times.
WRITER’S NOTE
The Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde is inspired by some of the themes and characters in Stevenson’s novel. In doing an extremely loose and highly collaborative adaptation this freed us to explore using the dark winding streets of Victorian Edinburgh as its setting, to incorporate some humour in the darkness, and it allowed me to create many original characters to accommodate the number of actors in the company.
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh: 19 – 21 March 2015
Dundee Repertory Theatre, Dundee: 25 March 2015
The Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde
Reviews
“As one of Europe’s leading companies working with adults with learning difficulties, Lung Ha Theatre Company works here with Drake Music Scotland to achieve its usual impressive production standard, transferring the action to Stevenson’s native Edinburgh, and featuring an outstanding, lyrical and pensive musical score by Greg Sinclair, played live by a six-piece band.”
Joyce McMillan – The Scotsman