Hyde & Shriek
When Trouble Puppet Theatre takes on Dr. Jekyll's dark tale, the villain may not be who you think
By Robert Faires, Fri., Oct. 31, 2014
This Halloween, Henry Jekyll isn't the only one cooking up something fiendish in his lab. Connor Hopkins, Austin's mad scientist of the puppetry arts, is back in his workshop with another work of literature strapped to the slab. He's been cutting off parts, attaching new ones, and conducting crazed experiments on this inanimate block of prose so as to transform it into something odd, original, and (cue the lightning) alive!
You may recall Hopkins' previous efforts in this vein, with Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The results have been consistently compelling, in part because Hopkins feels so little compulsion to be totally faithful to his source. If he sees the story tending toward the tedious or anti-dramatic, as with Frankenstein, he thinks nothing of grafting onto the theatrical body an unexpected new plot development, such as, say, shuttling Shelley's reanimated creature off to Paris to get caught up in the French Revolution. It's a sort of jolt of new life into dead tissue that Victor Frankenstein himself would appreciate.
Now, the Trouble Puppet Theatre Company artistic director has turned his unorthodox methods of adaptation on another man of science whose venture to unlock a secret of human existence unleashed something horrific: that very Dr. Jekyll. Just in time for our culture's annual dabble with the dark side, Trouble Puppet will premiere its version of Robert Louis Stevenson's tale of the man who was his own evil twin. And true to form, Hopkins is making the story his own, giving the bad boy top billing: The Strange Case of Edward Hyde and Dr. Jekyll. We couldn't resist asking Hopkins a little about his approach.
Austin Chronicle: You've stated elsewhere that the original story's big reveals – Jekyll is Hyde! We all have a dark side! – are no longer the big surprises or scary notions they once were. So why adapt it at all? What's the scary part of the story for you now?
Connor Hopkins: I took the notion that everyone has another side to them and sort of ran with it. So in our version, Jekyll's not the only one with secrets or secret lives. Nobody is what they appear to be, and the atmosphere of uncertainty and paranoia that creates is the scary part. That and the murders.
AC: With Frankenstein and this, you're working with stories where the horror's rooted in psychological metaphors. But you've also injected into your work recurring political themes. Will we see some of that here?
CH: Oh yeah. The old demons are all here: class, social engineering, exploitation. You name it.
AC: The title's a pretty good clue that this won't be your standard telling of Stevenson's story. Why give pride of place to Mr. Hyde?
CH: The further I got into the story, the more it seemed to have a class-conflict element – unsurprisingly, I suppose, given my inclinations. (You know what they say: When you've got a hammer, everything looks like a nail.) The relationship between Jekyll and his servants took on some prominence, and it occurred to me that, in a way, Hyde was also a servant, used by Jekyll for his own purposes. So Hyde became my working-class hero and Jekyll the aristocratic antagonist.
The Strange Case of Edward Hyde & Dr. Jekyll runs Oct. 30-Nov. 23. Thursday-Saturday, 8pm; Sunday, 6pm, at Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Rd. A costume party with food, drink, and live music by the Invincible Czars follows the performance on Halloween night. Tickets are $12, or $25 for the show and party, and are available at www.jekyll.brownpapertickets.com. For more information, call 512/573-2540 or visit www.troublepuppet.com.
