Jekyll & Hyde Darkly Shine in Pickens

A wonderful feeling happens when you watch one of your favorite shows. It doesn’t have to be a live play. Maybe it’s a movie you’ve seen a hundred times or a favorite cartoon from your childhood.

Another feeling altogether comes when you see you favorite show done in a different way. It may be offsetting at first, even a little confusing, but it can often be quite refreshing to revive a “newness” to your favorite ‘old’ show.

The Tater Patch Players did provide a nice freshness to a show most theater or movie goers have seen numerous times. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde delves deep into the human mind to provide a commentary on humanity and the desires and anger we often keep buried so far under our skin. What would happen if that part not only got out, but got control?

What amounted to an amazing two hours brought back one of my personal favorite shows with a very interesting take on Mr. Hyde himself. When you sit down to read your playbill, you’ll notice there are actually four people playing Mr. Hyde. Watch intently these different sides of Hyde as they explore the different personalities of an already fractured mind.

More importantly, though, watch the “5th Hyde” on the stage. You won’t find him named in the bill as Hyde, but he stands as my single favorite character on the stage detailing a slow and quite painful release, a release of control to “the beast” as he says it.

Jacob Clark performs, quite nicely, a Dr. Jekyll who manages to bring this “5th Hyde” to fruition in certain points of cold, calculating horror. What I love so much, though, is this horror is not violence or gore. Clark highlights a horror of what a man can become when he attempts to separate emotion from humanity, and he makes it very entertaining to watch as you see Dr. Jekyll slip a little further each time he is on stage.

One of my favorite points of the show Jekyll & Hyde in general is the thought always brought up as, “Which one was the real beast?” This showing manages to highlight that lingering question all over again in a definitively “Must-See” performance.