Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Assessing a pair of dance theater adaptations from across the pond: JEKYLL & HYDE and THE MAD HATTER’S TEA PARTY

• By drediman
• August 14, 2020
• No Comments

For me, one of the few perks of not having access to live theater is the opportunity to check out stage works that haven’t made it to New York (yet). This week, I caught a pair of dance theater adaptations — both created and performed by up-and-coming talents unfamiliar to me — from across the pond. Here are my thoughts on them.

Daniel Collins and Tim Hodges in Drew McOnie’s dance theater adaptation of “Jekyll and Hyde” at the Old Vic.

JEKYLL AND HYDE
The Old Vic

First up was Drew McOnie’s dance/theater hybrid take on Jekyll and Hyde (RECOMMENDED), which just wrapped up a week of free streaming. Despite being named after Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic horror novel, the Old Vic production interestingly owes as much debt to Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s classic cult musical Little Shop of Horrors. Set in 1950s London, the loose adaption tells the story of a geeky florist who unexpectedly finds fame and notoriety (sound familiar?) – mostly in the form of a brutish alter ego – at the consequence of a budding romantic relationship, as well as his own health and general well-being. Like his acclaimed fellow British director/choreographer Matthew Bourne, Mr. McOnie has the rare gift of choreographically telling a story with efficiency, uncanny lucidity (not once did I lose the plot during the wordless show), and audacious invention. He has also mastered the dance language of the era, which effectively helps establish the show’s setting (in conjunction with Grant Olding’s original score). The title characters were played by two dancers, Daniel Collins (Dr. Jekyll) and Tim Hodges as (Mr. Hyde), who each gave compelling but appropriately very different physical performances. Despite the overall excitement generated by the ensemble cast, the overall impact of the production was somewhat lacking in psychological depth and marred by some rather jarring shifts in tone. Unlike Little Shop of Horrors, which uses comedy and satire to help bridge the gap between its cartoonish period setting and gruesome plot points, McOnie’s Jekyll and Hyde sometimes left the audience a tad bewildered at its occasional incongruence.

The cast of ZooNation: The Kate Prince Company’s production of “The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party” at the Roundhouse.

THE MAD HATTER’S TEA PARTY
ZooNation: The Kate Prince Company / Co-produced by the Royal Opera House and Roundhouse

Available until today on the Royal Opera House’s YouTube channel is ZooNation: The Kate Prince Company’s The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party (SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED), another very loose dance theater adaptation, this one very obviously based on Lewis Carroll’s classic children’s books. Co-produced by the Royal Opera House and the adventurous Roundhouse, the piece was originally commissioned by the Royal Ballet and staged at the relatively sterile Lindbury Studio Theatre as a wildly contrasting companion piece to Christopher Wheeldon’s ballet Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (which played the main auditorium). The production was subsequently restaged at the decidedly more urban Roundhouse, which seems the more appropriate home for this youthful work and where it was captured on film. Playfully told through the hip-hop dance vernacular and set to an infectious bunch of funk-infused songs (written by Josh Cohen and DJ Walde) – with a sprinkling of spoken word throughout – The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party boldly resets Carroll’s tale in a mental health ward. Each of the iconic characters – among them, Alice, the Queen of Hearts, and, of course, the Mad Hatter – are depicted as mental health patients dealing with various personal issues. Ultimately, the work is a celebration of diversity and a revolt against the notion of “normalcy”. The spirit that permeates the piece is that of a house party – I suspect a thematic and choreographic pun intended by its creators. However, although I applaud the energy and enthusiasm of the endeavor and its woke message, at the end of the day, I unfortunately found the choreography repetitive (especially as unnecessarily spread across two acts) and some of the transitions curiously sloppy.