A new "Jekyll and Hyde" at ACT

Good guy, bad guy, same guy. The classic story with that theme has spun off a mediocre musical, various plays and 60 films — including one starring Abbott and Costello.

But there will always be another treatment of the Robert Louis Stevenson horror novella, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." And ACT Theatre is kicking off its 2009 season with a recent take on the story, crafted by prolific adapter Jeffrey Hatcher. (Hatcher's dramatization of "Tuesdays With Morrie" is currently at Seattle's Taproot Theatre.)

Hatcher's "J & H" has several actors playing each of the titular roles. And San Francisco Chronicle reviewer Robert Hurwitt praised it as "truer to Stevenson but hipper, sexier and more intense" than most other spins on the well-known story.

ACT Theatre artistic director Kurt Beattie chose the play, he says, "because it's a brilliant adaptation, one of Jeff's best. But also because the story has always carried with it a sense of truth about the double creature that human beings are — how we must find a way to coexist with the light and dark sides of ourselves, and our culture."

Beattie, who tapped actor-director R. Hamilton Wright to stage "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," has a soft spot for a good mystery. In recent years he presented the early Agatha Christie whodunit "Black Coffee," and Susan Hill's ghost tale, "Woman in Black," as "season extras" at ACT.

"It was an experiment," he explains, "to see if there was public interest in this kind of material."

The box-office verdict was mixed. But seizing upon a title everyone knows, one that conjures up archetypal images of psychic duality, Beattie is taking the plunge again.

Stevenson began writing "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" in the 1880s, after having a vivid dream of a transformation — a scene that later wound up in the book. It is said he took his wife's criticisms of the first draft to heart, burned the manuscript and rewrote the story in days.

That anecdote may be apocryphal, but whatever the case, "J & H" was a tremendous success with Victorian readers, at a shilling a book. The allegorical plight of the prominent, well-bred physician Henry Jekyll, whose scientific experiments transform him into his vile and bestial doppelgänger, Edward Hyde, clearly struck a nerve.

"The story has the power of great melodrama," Beattie suggests, "but it's more than just a thrill ride. Victorians had a great belief in social conformity, but at the same time all these contradictions of human nature were coming to light. Jeff's play is framed in such a way that you understand intellectually what both Stevenson and Freud believed — our unconscious can rule our conscious lives."

Premiered by Arizona Theatre Company, Hatcher's script is a 2009 nominee for a best play Edgar Award, bestowed by the Mystery Writers of America. Beattie promises the staging by Wright (who acted in California and Arizona productions of the play) will have plenty of London fog and spooky sound effects.

How is ACT faring generally, in this sour economic situation? Is it a Jekyll forecast, or a Hyde year?

"We're hanging in there," reports Beattie, "but we're financially fragile. We have no current cash-flow problems now, but if we have to make more cuts later on, we will."

ACT is coming off a rosy 2008 season, with two mainstage hits ("A Marvelous Party," "Becky's New Car") and an expanded roster of film, theater, music and dance events on its several stages. In March the theater hosted the Moisture Festival of vaudeville and burlesque. And its popular Central Heating Lab cabaret series is returning.

"Much more is on the way," promises Beattie. "We want to keep things hopping."

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com