Review | JEKYLL AND HYDE by A Slightly Isolated Dog

A Slightly Isolated Dog's production of Jekyll & Hyde was a spicy French, comedic telling of a classic gothic story is something I never knew I wanted but turns out I needed it all along.

It's Thursday night and I'm entering the Underground Theatre at the Powerhouse. There are five performers on stage who were flirting with us, and the audience seated in their banks as we walked in making butterflies flutter in our stomach. And might I add, each performer looked so glamourous, chick and sexy, bringing the heat to this cold June night.

While we still got our favourite story of our favourite scientist with a split personality, this retelling had more sexual innuendos, socially distanced props and lots of pushing the darkness within down. Directed by Leo Gene Peters, the company managed to take the essence of the canonical work and transform into an artefact that brought joy to the audience by turning the dialogue into twenty-first century quips, by making the villain more of a caricature rather than a public enemy number one and by embedding the audience in their narrative, making it feel even more of a farce.

Clowning has a very narrow window of success, but you wouldn't have noticed with this cast.There were flavours of Monty Python, Gaulier and surrealism comedy as the five clowns shared their trails and tribulations including asking the audience to pay off their mortgage debt, reprieve one's sexual desire, reprieve one's need for intimacy and to always push the darkness down. The telling of the story often got sidetracked by blackouts, audience rendezvous's, proposals of love on Instagram live and recurring fondling of the socially distancing stick. And no, I won't elaborate on the last one. You'll have to just see it yourself...

Why go see this show? Because you'll laugh for eighty minutes and have a great time doing so. It may be a cliche, but my face truly ached. You'll see five clowns doing the most bizarre and surreal things, but doing it so effortlessly. You'll see an adaptation of a story that transports you out of reality for a bit and then returns you feeling more recharged and ready to do anything. It's a story that is clever and funny, but also makes you think and reflect on the darkness within and whether or not we should push it down.

Rating: 5 Stars

This production runs from 2nd of June - 6th of June at the Brisbane Powerhouse.

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