Douglas Messerli | The Jekyll and Hyde Play [short essay]

the jekyll and hyde play

by Douglas Messerli

 

Thomas Russell Sullivan The Strange Tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, first performed at the Boston Museum, May 1887.

 

Before I proceed to discuss the numerous films that rewrote Stevenson’s original tale, I should briefly discuss one of the first of several plays that were adapted and presented in response to Strange Tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde which reached the stage the only a year after the fiction’s publication, the first performance taking place at the Boston Museum in May 1887. The play, written by Boston author Thomas Russell Sullivan, felt the need—and, seemingly, determined the course of most other adaptations—by adding female characters and romantic plot complications to the original all-male story. It also added “The” to the title, which many later editions of the book did as well.

     As in the several film versions, actor Richard Mansfield, who had purchased the rights from Stevenson, played both the roles of Jekyll and Hyde, his transformations creating such horrified reactions from the play’s audience that it became a huge success, moving on to London where it was performed for 10 weeks in 1888.

     The plays was forced to close down with the growing hysteria surrounding the Jack the Ripper serial murders with even some stage actors being considered suspects in the real murders. When Mansfield’s name was mentioned in the London newspapers as among those suspects, he immediately closed the production.

     The 1920 Paramount film production of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was based, in part, upon Robertson’s play.

 

Los Angeles, December 3, 2021