Jekyll and Hyde theatre review: Crude laughs cheapen this misguided modernisation

One of the greatest joys of this past summer season of theatre was the National Youth Theatre’s peppy and accomplished residency at the Yard in Hackney Wick.

Now they’re back in central London, in one of the West End’s dingiest venues, and all has suddenly become dire and dismal, despite the undoubtedly fine intentions of this rep season which has been established as an alternative to pricey drama school.

An ensemble of 16 flails about wildly in Evan Placey’s ‘radical reimagining’ of Robert Louis Stevenson’s gothic novella of 1886. This book, which famously contains almost no trace of female existence, has been given a gender reboot, meaning that the focus is now on Dr Jekyll’s widow, Harriet (Elizabeth McCafferty).

A bright woman emerging from the fog of mourning, she wants to carry on her husband’s scientific research and is also drawn to the nascent shoots of female empowerment that are beginning to see the light in London.

The premise, then, is sound, but the execution most definitively is not. For those not intimately familiar with all the contours of the original this is very hard to follow and bedevilled with multiple modern insertions, all bewilderingly misguided.

A spirit of cheap loucheness pervades – the suffragettes talk of ‘c*nts’ and ‘tw*ts’, a vicar breaks off his sermon to reference ‘anal penetration’ – and the audience sniggers and titters, which is never a good sign. Tonally speaking, Roy Alexander Weise’s production is all over the place.

A modern young woman in jeans and a backpack wanders the action wordlessly; a drastic change of tack in the second half means that we’ll hear much more from Florence Monroe (Jenny Walser, impressive in her steely determination) but by then it’s almost impossible to care.

Placey takes on everything, deals with almost nothing and does no favours to these hopeful young performers.

In rep until Dec 6 (020 7395 5405, theambassadorstheatre.co.uk)