DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE

The clock is ticking on your chance to check out The Long Beach Playhouse's inventive stage adaptation of DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE directed by David Scaglione. In his bestselling 1969 novel, THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN, John Fowles identified Robert Louis Stevenson's lurid novella as the linchpin text of the 1800s: "This—the fact that every Victorian had two minds—is the one piece of equipment we must always take with us on our travels back to the nineteenth century [...]. This, I think, makes the best guidebook to the age very possibly Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Behind its latterday Gothick lies a very profound and epoch-revealing truth." Jeffrey Hatcher's script for this stage adaptation, which succeeds in evoking the grand guignol seediness of Stevenson's original 1886 story, offers clever new twists on the Victorian obsession with extreme polarities. The artful choice to employ contemporary music as the play's backing score seems to hint at the notion that not much has changed in the human psyche since the late 1880s. Far too many of us still behave like Victorians at heart, which is why contemporary audiences continue to be enthralled by Dr. Jekyll's never-ending internal struggle. The Long Beach Playhouse will be presenting four more performances of DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE on its Mainstage on October 11th (8:00 p.m.), October 12th (2:00 p.m.), October 17th (8:00 p.m.), and October 18th (8:00 p.m.). Don't miss it!