JEKYLL & HYDE, DRAMA KING. DOUBLE BILL
Should one be a theatre critic? ‘Let me be unhappy rather than vile’. So said the great 19th century actor-manager William Macready, not we hope referencing The Cambridge Critique’s scribblers. Whatever is the very opposite of ‘vile’ is the word to use for an astonishing theatrical double at the Corpus Playroom. Two contrasting shows by Stratford Productions presented a very master class in how to do a one-man play. One was the oppressively dark ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’; the other a joyous tribute to the acting profession, ‘The Drama King’. Each had a large cast played by the same person: Mark Stratford (a great surname for a player).
In his adaptation for the stage of RL Stevenson’s 1886 Good v Evil novella, Stratford plays each of the characters without any use of hats or false beards. Everything is in gesture, expression, voice and accent. It is method acting with a capital M. The result is a physical tour-de-force as the actor switches in a microsecond from the tortured Jekyll to the crazed man-beast Hyde. Pinpoint lighting helped as the warmer reds and oranges of Jekyll flashed into dark and ominous greens of the crouched and bent figure of the malevolent Hyde – essentially the good doctor’s inner demon released by experimental potion.
In the same Victorian garb, Stratford conjures up a spinetingling array of tortured souls including Utterson, the lawyer and de facto narrator. Stratford is to be congratulated not only for his outstanding performance (which frightened the life out of me) but for sticking closely to Stevenson’s richly sonorous language – the production felt like a visceral audio book. He also didn’t shy away from that most enduring of Victorian theatre forms; melodrama. Reminding one of ‘Alien’ there were especially scary moments when the restless inner-corporal figure of Hyde fights to get out of Jekyll’s reluctant body. First the merest involuntary twitch of the shoulder leading to the dramatic emergence of the sinister ogre intent on doing horrible things (including the battering of a victim which although involved only mime, was done with savage intensity).
After an hour’s break, Stratford was back in a completely different role, William Macready, friend of Dickens, the great actor and theatre teacher of his day. This was a lovely warm tribute to a man of whom most of us had barely heard. And yet at the end of the 75-minute piece we welcomed him as a friend, as someone certainly now on my fantasy dinner party list. Startford takes us through Macready’s eventful life as actor-manager lighting up the Victorian London stage, causing a bloody riot in the USA (over 30 killed!), stage rivalries, love affairs, friendships - especially with the author of Nicholas Nickleby who dedicated the book to Macready and based its comic theatre owner Mr Crummles on him. There were highs when cheers for his Richard III rang out at Drury Lane, and lows as TB claimed his beloved daughter and wife. But Stratford’s warm, engaging personality shone through each of the many characters he portrayed. As theatre bio, it was exhaustive (and for the actor, surely exhausting). One felt that at the end of 2 ½ hours alone on stage, lighting up our evening, the spirit of Macready surely hovered over our solo actor. And maybe after reading this review, the great tragedian, now in the sky, thinks a little better of critics.
photography by Dan Bridge (adliberate.com)
