{"id":6328,"date":"2012-09-28T15:10:12","date_gmt":"2012-09-28T19:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=6328"},"modified":"2012-09-28T15:10:12","modified_gmt":"2012-09-28T19:10:12","slug":"jekyll-hyde-reason-is-the-slave-of-the-passions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2012\/09\/jekyll-hyde-reason-is-the-slave-of-the-passions.html","title":{"rendered":"“Jekyll & Hyde”: Reason is the slave of the passions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The Synetic Theater is a DC troupe, mostly run by Georgian immigrants trained in the former Soviet Union, which does dance-based adaptations of literature. So they do wordless Shakespeare, for example, which I totally thought was on par with \u201cjumbo shrimp\u201d until I saw their phenomenal Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/em>. They do a fair amount of horror. They\u2019re always very OTT, sometimes to the point of kitsch (which I don\u2019t mind), and they typically aim to give you a really intense new experience<\/em> of the story rather than a new interpretation of its meaning. I think they\u2019re one of the best things in DC\u2019s already surprisingly-strong theater scene.<\/p>\n

Their current show is Jekyll & Hyde<\/em><\/a> and it is a trip. It has a steampunk aesthetic, but also big video screens, so it\u2019s sort of a tech\/time-period mashup. It\u2019s fast<\/em>\u2013it plays like a rocket-sled to the depths of Hell\u2013and it goes much further than the book in showing Hyde\u2019s depravity and violence. This led my companion to say that she felt like the show was just wallowing in evil, and I can see that as a criticism. You really don\u2019t get a sense of what goodness looks like, or what redemption would look like if Jekyll somehow managed to triumph over Hyde. I mean, one reductive way of thinking about the show is that there did come a moment when I had to step back and say to myself, \u201cYou know, I\u2019ve never seen a man rape himself in a wedding dress before.\u201d It\u2019s art! Or maybe science!<\/p>\n

But in fact, I was totally compelled and thoroughly frightened by this show. I thought it did what it intended. (My companion, by contrast, said she wasn\u2019t scared so much as disgusted.) I thought Alex Mills, as J\/H, really gave a powerful sense of how terrifying it is to feel completely out of one\u2019s own control. The music works to create a fever of ecstasy, ekstasis, standing outside oneself\u2013which the show of course presents as horror rather than rapture.<\/p>\n

Even before he begins his transformations, Jekyll keeps human subjects in his laboratory. Apparently the program guide gives some kind of explanation for these people, who are in crazy crawling postures like the cavedwellers in The Descent<\/em> and who wear gas masks and bondage-y strap-based costumes. I like them better unexplained, though. They serve a lot of thematic and allusive purposes: They suggest that Hyde represents the upwelling of Jekyll\u2019s preexisting lust for power over others<\/em>, rather than sex or violence, which makes his loss of control over himself much more Dantean; they\u2019re able to turn the tables on J\/H, as I alluded to in the headline of this post; there are a couple women there, so the show can play with a bit of horror sapphism, which I always appreciate even though I admit it\u2019s often a fairly homophobic trope; they play into fears of scientist as replacement God, the Frankenstein touch. And they are just so creepy<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So apparently this show is really not for everyone. I thought it was horrific and it created a lot<\/em> of memorable images of fragmenting identity, which is pretty much all I asked it to do.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Synetic Theater is a DC troupe, mostly run by Georgian immigrants trained in the former Soviet Union, which does dance-based adaptations of literature. So they do wordless Shakespeare, for example, which I totally thought was on par with \u201cjumbo shrimp\u201d until I saw their phenomenal Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream. They do a fair amount of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[171,35,119,100],"class_list":["post-6328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","tag-abuse-of-power-comes-as-no-surprise","tag-district-of-chaos","tag-horror","tag-synetic-theater"],"yoast_head":"\n"Jekyll & Hyde": Reason is the slave of the passions<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Synetic Theater is a DC troupe, mostly run by Georgian immigrants trained in the former Soviet Union, which does dance-based adaptations of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2012\/09\/jekyll-hyde-reason-is-the-slave-of-the-passions.html\" \/>\n<meta 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