Rancho Santa Fe Review |

In North Coast Rep’s ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,’ the evil side of the doctor’s personality is split between four actors

In Jeffrey Hatcher’s theatrical adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” you can’t tell the Mr. Hydes without a program.

Fortunately, at performances of North Coast Repertory Theatre’s production of Hatcher’s play, you will have a program and it will identify the four actors playing the “evil twin” of Dr. Henry Jekyll (played by Bruce Turk).

At the helm of this production is Shana Wride, who’s making her North Coast Rep directorial debut after having performed there numerous times.

“I think this (the multiple Mr. Hydes) is an interesting device in that we all have a different version of ourselves within us,” she said. “What drives us and what scares us is more nuanced than pure good vs. evil.”

This production is an ensemble piece that also stars Jacob Bruce, Katie MacNichol, Conner Marx, Christopher M. Williams, Ciarra Stroud and Cindy Rumley. In casting the play, Wride said she was “looking for people who can serve the tone of the play in general and shape-shift as needed to tell the story.”

That story, which Stevenson published in 1886 and which Hatcher adapted for the stage in 2008, is one that has been told and re-told for decades, its popularity never waning. In the story, Dr. Jekyll is a scientist who — while experimenting with potions and powders — has conjured another side of himself, Edward Hyde, a sensualist and villain free to commit the sins Jekyll is too civilized to comprehend. When Hyde meets a woman who stirs his interest, Jekyll fears for her life and decides to end his experiments. But Hyde has other ideas, and so the two sides battle each other in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse to determine who shall be the master and who his slave.

“There’s something fascinating about the story itself,” Wride said, “and a reason that it’s done over and over again in many different ways: this idea of the good and the so-called evil in us and how they’re battling to come to the surface. It says something about who we are but in such a great nightmare-dreamscape way.”

Wride has directed in San Diego before, including at Cygnet Theatre with its 2015 production of Samuel D. Hunter’s “The Whale” starring Andrew Oswald. She shared that acting is her first love, “but it’s such a profound and huge love that it has allowed me to explore other avenues as an artist and as a theater worker.”

She and North Coast Rep artistic director David Ellenstein have known each other since the 1990s. Wride appreciates that Ellenstein offered her the challenge of directing “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

“Different directors have different skill sets in terms of whether it’s working with the actors or the musicality of the piece, or thinking outside of the box,” she said. “When David and I were talking, we both acknowledged that this is not necessarily a play people would assume I would direct. There’s a fear in stepping outside of your comfort zone. I was afraid to do it and compelled to do it for that very reason.”

Fear is part of the attraction of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” which North Coast Rep is staging through the Halloween season.

“For me, it’s a delicate balance,” Wride said. “The tone of this play is a thriller. It’s being done during Halloween. It is scary, but it’s also very human. It’s about the deepest parts of our humanity.”

‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’

When: Previews, Wednesday, Oct. 18 through Oct. 20. Opens Oct. 21 and runs through Nov. 12. Showtimes: 7 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays; 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sunday. (Additional performance 2 p.m. Nov. 8)

Where: North Coast Repertory Theatre, 987 Lomas Santa Fe Drive, Solana Beach

Tickets: $49-$74

Phone: (858) 481-1055

Online: northcoastrep.org

—David L. Coddon is a freelance writer for The San Diego Union-Tribune.