A glittering amateur production full of bright new talent
A bold new adaptation of R.L Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, adapted by Evan Pacey and directed by Jen Tan, took to the stage at the Liverpool Everyman for a limited run of only three nights this July. The culmination of an intensive twelve-week programme, this production was staged by the Young Everyman Playhouse (YEP), a free creative programme for 14 – 25 year olds that gives a voice to those who are often underrepresented in the theatre world and provides them with the opportunity to learn alongside seasoned professionals. This production was staged with an ensemble cast of 23 young people alongside stage technicians, sound operators, and assistant producers also part of the YEP programme, with set and costume designed by LIPA students.
A spin on the Victorian tale many are familiar with, this version is loud, feminist, radical, and doesn’t shy away from controversy. In this version, the widow of the eponymous scientist who boldly continues his work takes centre stage, despite the disapproval of the all-male scientific council. Her transformation mirrors the turmoil of the city of London, where angry women led by Josephine Butler (Ellie Anna Weir) protest the oppressive Contagious Diseases Acts of the 1860s that allowed policemen to forcibly inspect the bodies of working women for STDs, under claim of ‘protecting’ their military men from diseased prostitutes.
Jenna Al Nasir delivers a brilliant performance as Harriet Jekyll/Flossie Hyde. Her physicality and movement, along with shifts in body language as she moves between the two identities, are excellent, and slowly blend together as the play continues and the personalities assimilate. Scenes she shares with Sean Howard’s detective Gabriel John Utterson are very strong, with their chemistry and rapport shifting between warmly familiar but shy as Harriett, and powerfully charged as Flossie.
The first act takes place entirely in Victorian London, with a beautiful set and great period costuming, also designed and built by YEP creatives. Despite the setting, the script makes many effective comedic lapses into modern slang and ‘tiktok speech’, which all falls into place after the interval when a modern metanarrative is brought into play. Just as the mirrors in Harriet Jekyll’s sitting room force the characters to contend with their own identity, in the second act the audience are made to consider whether the fortunes of women in the 21st century have really improved so much since the 19th. Bodies are still policed, threats of sexual violence are still the default response to women with strong opinions, and violent crime against men is taken more seriously than those perpetrated by them. Katie Comer is excellent as Florence Munroe, the modern revolutionary parallel to Harriet/Flossie who finds herself in the middle of a police investigation into a ‘terrorist’ group of women enacting violent protest against the patriarchy.
With an unexpected ending that doesn’t dull its claws, this new staging of Jekyll and Hyde is a bold and ever relevant examination of purity culture vs secret hedonism, female emancipation, and identity that gives its young people the chance to raise their voices and cry for change.