The small square stage looks more fitted up for a standup gig than a production of Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 “shilling shocker”: there’s just a microphone, a chair and spotlights. Gary McNair has turned the gothic novel into a one-woman show, rivetingly performed by Audrey Brisson, that is billed as a comic adaptation but the snappy lines never take away from the tale’s dark intrigues.
The innovations in its staging leave us feeling like we are experiencing (rather than merely watching) a well-known narrative in an unfamiliar way. Director Michael Fentiman, who worked with Brisson on Amélie the Musical, brings similar imagination and detail here. Jekyll and Hyde is told like a detective story and a noirish atmosphere is raised through Emily Irish’s lighting design and Richard Hammarton’s sound design that rumbles like an oncoming avalanche. Together, the sound and light seem to lead the storytelling rather than accompany it.
