Mix
three parts nitroglycerin, two parts
potassium sulfate and one drop of
blood and you have "Chemical
Imbalance: A Jekyll and Hyde Story."
The play is currently on view at Curtain
Call Theatre in a gloriously silly
production directed by Cindy Brizzell-Bates.
In recent years, there has been a
theatrical trend of sending up classics
in over-the-top fashion, and "Imbalance"
certainly falls squarely into that
realm.
Robert Louis Stevenson's quintessential
tale of the battle between good and
evil has been adapted any number of
times before, but never in so patently
goofy a fashion. And never with so
many men dressed as women (and vice-versa).
This adaptation, by Lauren Wilson,
paints Dr. Henry Jekyll more as a
buffoon than as a mad genius, and
the action that spins all around him
is even crazier.
"One can't tamper with old books
just for fun," Euphronia Jekyll
says at the end of act one with a
purposeful wink. In the play, the
remark s own drawing room, which set
designer Michael Blau has turned into
a fully-fledged Victorian yard sale
of upended chairs, knickknacks and
detritus.
It's a fitting echo of the entropy
of the Jekyll household, in which
Euphronia (Chris Foster, with his
burly frame pushed into a bad ball
gown) lords over her loony brood.
Patrick White plays Jekyll, and his
natural manic tendencies are given
full flower in the role. His contorted
changes from Jekyll to Hyde not only
had the audience in stitches at Sunday's
matinee; they also cracked up fellow
actor Kevin Gardner, playing Jekyll's
cousin, Xavier Utterson.
Gardner is a great second fiddle,
and in his many scenes with White
he piled on the comedy without ever
upstaging the main character.
The rest of the cast is filled out
with other local notables, including
Kathleen Carey (who gets to stretch
her comic legs a little more than
usual here) and Jack Fallon, whose
legs are comic (he's dressed as a
woman, too).
The house staff gets in on the action
as well, with Barbara Richards and
Lynn Scott veering back and forth
from being servile to subversive as
the story unfolds.
