Theatre Mill love to stage plays in unexpected places. The latest setting is the undercroft of Merchant Adventurers’ Hall for a new take on Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde, reports CHARLES HUTCHINSON.

YORK company Theatre Mill set their sights on the undercroft at the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall for their latest site-specific production.

“We’d been looking at that space for some time; there was something gothic about it that smacked me in the face,” says director Samuel Wood.

“The main thing was that since we’ve been putting on plays in heritage sites, such as the Mansion House and the Council Chamber at York Guildhall, we wanted to find the perfect marriage of play and space.”

That union has now been made between the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall and playwright Nick Lane’s adaptation of The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde, first staged by Hull Truck Theatre in 2012 and now revised for Theatre Mill.

“Nick came to watch our production of Agatha Christie’s Witness For The Prosecution in the Council Chamber and our partnership developed from there,” says Samuel.

“Nick’s original idea was to have four actors but he had to do it with three for Hull Truck.

“We’ve gone back to four because the undercroft space is so large and I knew it would seem too intimate with only three. It’s good to let it breathe with four actors and to bring clarity to the casting, which is now easier to work out.”

The cast will be led by James Weaver, reprising his Hull Truck role as the physically disabled Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde, while Viktoria Kay – so named for Equity because she is “Viktoria with a K’” – will play Eleanor, a Lady Macbeth figure of Lane’s invention. Further roles will go to company regular Adam Elms as the lawyer, Gabriel John Utterson, and David Chafer as Dr Jekyll’s fellow physician, Lanyon.

Set in the heart of Victorian London, Robert Louis Stevenson’s gothic tale will see the undercroft being converted into Dr Jekyll’s laboratory, designed by Becs Andrews, where Dr Jekyll will seek to change not only the face of science but the world in the belief that one must risk madness to achieve genius. However, in seeking to discover his inner self, the brilliant scientist will instead uncover a monster.

“The part was written for James, whether he knows that or not,” says Samuel. “I think Nick thought, ‘I know just the person who can leap around like a freak’.”

Weaver was last seen on a York stage as a menacing, lascivious lush in Hull Truck Theatre’s A Taste Of Honey at the Theatre Royal last July. “So you’ve seen my Hyde side already,” he says. Now we must see both sides of one man. “As an actor, the character switches, the extremes, are really attractive; you can’t resist that challenge.

“What’s interesting for me is what is the driving force behind Jekyll’s change? There’s the science side but there’s also the ego side that is driving him just as much, which is insane and ill advised, but his ego makes him fascinating to play.”

Stevenson wrote his Jekyll and Hyde novella in episodic mode, where the reader would not have been aware that Jekyll and Hyde were the same person until the “big reveal”, but modern audiences are fully versed in his split personality.

“Everyone knows that Jekyll is Hyde, so what I was looking for in an adaptation was one that was unashamed to acknowledge that and not hide from revealing it,” says Samuel. “So instead it’s all about how the story is told; the interpersonal relationships, and that is where Nick excels.

“When Stevenson wrote his book it was at the time of the emergence of psychoanalysis and awareness of the split personality, and that was the loaded gun within his story, whereas now most people will have had contact with someone in this situation and recognise it.”

“But we still don’t understand it,” suggests Viktoria. “We’re now much more concerned with working out what makes us tick, because of the impact of reality TV, where we’re obsessed with what people do and with understanding their behaviour, so we now have more reality TV shows than dramas, as we fixate on this fundamental question of who we are.”

One of the joys of rehearsals has been savouring Nick Lane’s language. “Nick’s writing is made for actors,” says Samuel. “He has a wonderful instinct for real, natural dialogue; it reads well on the page and it’s then ten times better coming out of an actor’s mouth,” he says. “He’s very visceral; he writes from the heart and he aims for the jugular.”

Viktoria is full of praise for Lane too. “I would say, without stereotyping other male writers, that his writing for women is exceptional,” she says.

“Eleanor is possibly the most detailed and three-dimensional woman that I’ve ever played, someone I can get my head round very easily. I identify with her very strongly and Nick’s detail, his tiny nuggets of detail, make her so complex, which is so rare.

“In this piece, Eleanor is a woman ahead of her time, and for me, growing up as a ladette in the Nineties, she strikes me as bold and proud and doesn’t slip into the dutiful wife role easily.”

James enthuses over Lane’s writing skills too. “A lot of people know Nick for his free-flowing comedy writing, and especially his timing of his comedy, but in this play it’s different: there’s the balance of lightness and darkness, and the lightness just pings out and will be fun to play because of the ease of the way he writes,” he says.

“Nick’s a good friend of mine and I see a hell of a lot of him in his writing. He’s very capable and allows the words to flow out of him without any ego.”

• Theatre Mill present The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde at the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall, Fossgate, York, from Thursday (February 26) to March 22 at 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday and Sunday matinees. Tickets: £20 to £25 on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk