Theater review | "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"

"Man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is."

So wrote psychoanalyst C.G. Jung, in 1938. And many decades earlier, 19th-century author Robert Louis Stevenson was on the same page in his tour-de-force novella, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."

Unlike most of his Victorian peers, Stevenson did not view humans as either good or evil, sinner or sanctified, but as part demon, part angel. And if we don't acknowledge and reconcile the two, the demonic side can prevail.

Jeffrey Hatcher's new dramatization of " Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," in its Seattle debut at ACT Theatre, exacerbates the psychic split Stevenson wrote of — and with additional splintering.

Upstanding scientist Dr. Henry Jekyll (played by Bradford Farwell) is tormented not by one devilish doppelgänger, Edward Hyde, but by multiple versions of him. And when four garishly caped, stick-wielding alter egos rear their ugly heads in your psyche, the chances of goodness prevailing are slim-to-none.

Hatcher's novel chorus of Hydes, once you get used to it, makes for some transfixing moments in R. Hamilton Wright's staging of the script, which also has some weaknesses on the way to achieving white-knuckle suspense and dramatic momentum.

Note that ACT's production makes vivid the brutality of Mr. Hyde's acts of murderous, senseless violence — and its correspondence with the outbursts of individual mayhem in our own time.

Ironically, there's less contrast between Hyde and Jekyll in this treatment than in retellings in which both are portrayed by the same man. For instance, in the classic 1941 film version, Spencer Tracy transforms instantly from well-groomed gent to hairy, roaring beast after quaffing his secret elixir.

Farwell's Jekyll is brilliant but churlish, an impatient sort who rudely upbraids a colleague, Dr. Carew (Brandon Whitehead), during a classroom corpse dissection.

He also has no time for women, until he makes a tenuous connection with the dewy young chambermaid, Elizabeth (well-played by pretty Sylvie Davidson), who has fallen under Hyde's darkly erotic spell.

Moreover, as the murders committed by his "shadow" multiply, Jekyll stubbornly refuses to admit them as his own, insisting he can tame the beast through sheer will.

After a somewhat laggy start, this interior and externalized conflict gains force and creepiness in a suspenseful second act. The more trapped, desperate and deluded Jekyll gets, the more vital Farwell's performance.

Though he can get shouty, and tripped up by a slippery Scots brogue, David Anthony Lewis uses his bearlike physicality to become the most dominant and ferocious Hyde. (Like the efficient utility players Whitehead, Deborah Fialkow and David Pichette, Lewis plays multiple roles.)

It could not be easy blocking this show in the round, and there were a few sight problems from where I sat. But Wright's choral choreography of the numerous Hydes, is striking and, on occasion, aptly nerve-jangling.

Marcia Dixcy Jory's costumes set the Victorian tone. And Rick Paulsen's shadows-and-fog Gothic lighting effects are superb, timed smartly with the jagged, discordant chamber music in Brendan Patrick Hogan's sound design. There's also a trippy laboratory in Matthew Smucker's set, but it's used too sparingly.

Do we still have anything to learn from Stevenson's lurid tale? Read Jung, and you'll think we do. Or just watch the nightly news, if you can bear it.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com

The information in this article, originally published April 17, 2009, was corrected. he set designer for ACT Theatre's production of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is Matthew Smucker. His name was misspelled in a play review on Monday.