Fam­ous French* com­pany A Slightly Isol­ated Dog (so French, so fam­ous) is back with Jekyll & Hyde. It’s about a very good man – Dr Jekyll – who indulges his very bad side – Mr Hyde – by drink­ing a potion. Only it’s not long before he doesn’t need to drink the potion for his dark side to come out…

The five per­formers Louis, Lily, Juli, Phil­lipe, and Ginger (Samuel Aus­tin, Susie Berry, Andrew Pater­son, Jonath­an Price and Com­frey Sanders) play­fully greet us before enter the theatre space. They’re build­ing a rela­tion­ship with us and find­ing out who would be party to their games. That’s one of the joys of this show – the way the audi­ence are drawn into help­ing tell the story. The cast ensure every­one gets close to the action at some stage. At times they are dir­ectly address­ing a sec­tion of the audi­ence. This can get con­fus­ing as sev­er­al dif­fer­ent stor­ies are developed and shared but the style high­lights the themes they are explor­ing – busy­n­ess of con­tem­por­ary life, anxi­et­ies and prob­lems that plague us and how to deal with them. The char­ac­ters of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde are played by the cast while the rest of us get to be dis­carded lov­ers, doc­tors, pass­ersby, pub­lic sculp­tures, orphans, fact­ory work­ers, props, and the envir­on­ment.

Chaot­ic fun if you’re happy to be part of the action.

* Made up of Wel­ling­ton act­ors

  • Jekyll and Hyde on at Circa Theatre to 11 Feb­ru­ary 2017 (They’re also show­ing Don Juan on at Circa Theatre 4,7,9 & 10 Feb­ru­ary 2017)