Theatre reviews: Jekyll & Hyde | Macbeth

Forbes Masson gives a magnificent performance in Gary McNair’s solo version of Jekyll & Hyde at the Lyceum, writes Joyce McMillan

Jekyll & Hyde, Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh *****

Macbeth, Royal Highland Centre, Edinburgh ****

After the hurly-burly of the Christmas season, January is normally the quietest of times for theatre in Scotland. This year, though, audiences in Edinburgh are being offered an unusual feast of midwinter riches, as both the Lyceum Theatre, and a huge consortium of touring producers including the Underbelly, roll out new theatrical versions of two mighty classics with powerful Scottish connections.

At the Lyceum, Gary McNair’s solo version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s great Jekyll & Hyde story – magnificently delivered by Forbes Masson, as Jekyll’s friend, the lawyer Utterson – is a brilliant and timely response to a familiar text, by one of Scotland’s leading contemporary playwrights; and in terms of structure, it faithfully follows Stevenson’s tale, although at a brisk 70 minutes, it edits some detail.

Yet for all its familiar outlines, McNair’s version represents a powerful and searching revision of the text, stripped of poetry and formality, sometimes strikingly contemporary, but full of that agonised self-searching about traditional masculinity and its more brutal undercurrents that lies at the heart of Stevenson’s story, and is also central to many 21st century conversations.

In that sense, this Jekyll & Hyde seems like a natural successor to McNair’s 2017 show Locker Room Talk, a troubling verbatim piece about how men talk about women in their absence; and Forbes Masson performs it with immense controlled passion and a dazzling vocal range and flexibility, embracing both the power of the original story, and the significance of McNair’s 21st century voice. Michael Fentiman’s production is technically thrilling, using amplified and natural sound, alongside blasts of dazzling white light that outline space, and suggest settings. And at the end, as a shattered and shrunken Utterson witnesses the utter wreckage of his friend, this Jekyll & Hyde rightly leaves us with many more questions than answers, both about Stevenson’s great story, and about its significance for 21st century audiences, almost 140 years on.

Simon Godwin’s warehouse production of Macbeth, by contrast – already seen in Liverpool, and set to tour on to London and Washington DC – takes a relatively conventional approach to Shakespeare’s darkest and most thrilling poetic text; and that despite the fact that the audience enters the big RHC arena through a powerful installation evoking a 21st century war zone of a blasted heath, full of smouldering braziers and burned-out vehicles.

Forbes Masson in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde PIC: Mihaela Bodlovic

The heath is never seen again, though, once the action begins on the formal side of Frankie Bradshaw’s set, an austere grey range of steps rising to a translucent screen that offers glimpses of the supernatural world beyond. In this space, director Simon Godwin and a cast of 20 deliver a brisk and absorbing Macbeth that has its ups and downs in quality of performance, but is always striking for the clarity and power with which it delivers Shakespeare’s mighty text.

Ralph Fiennes gives us a slightly elderly and sardonic Macbeth, crouching around the stage like a veteran Richard III, leering impotently at his wife and snapping at his servants; and he and Indira Varma, as Lady Macbeth, are never afraid to play the odd scene for laughs, as she mocks his scruples like the ambitious spouse in any good-going dynastic soap opera.

As the drama rolls towards its final battle, though, and Macbeth begins to feel the extent of his betrayal by the three young witches – more New Age travellers than traditional hags – it makes an unforgettably powerful transition into full-blown tragedy; and for those happy to be reminded of the sheer brilliance of Shakespeare’s theatrical language – and of how richly it supports those who hear it well, and deliver it faithfully to an audience – this is a truly impressive and moving evening, cheered on by a deeply appreciative Edinburgh audience.

Jekyll and Hyde is at the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, until 27 January, and on tour to Perth, Dundee and Stirling, until 17 February. Macbeth is at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Edinburgh, until 27 January.