On Theater:

When Golden West College reopens its Mainstage Theater next week after a yearlong renovation, audiences will experience a story suitably presented during the Halloween season.

Originally a frightful novel by Robert Louis Stevenson and later cinematic showcases for Fredric March and Spencer Tracy, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” has survived the test of time. It’s even been transformed into a stage musical.

According to Director Tom Amen, the adaptation by Jeffrey Hatcher is “theatrically elegant and dramatically unrelenting. Hatcher’s brilliant take on Stevenson’s original story is everything a psychological thriller should be — slick, provocative, sexy and intense.”

“This is not your grandmother’s ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,’” Amen said.

In researching the genesis of this classic horror tale, Amen was reminded of its “great sense of truth about the complex nature of the human animal.”

“The struggle to coexist with the forces of light and darkness rage within each one of us,” he said. “Regardless of our social stature, we are all involved in the same human struggle.”

Today, Amen notes, thanks to Sigmund Freud and others, it’s not generally accepted that individuals are made up of myriad personalities, which inhabit the subconscious mind. But in Stevenson’s time, the term “subconscious” had not even been coined.

“Furthermore,” Amen said, “Stevenson wrote in a period of intense Victorian repression, a period where sexuality was to be rigidly suppressed and thought to be an impulse sent by the devil to bewitch and bewilder us. Thus, Stevenson’s combination of fantasy thriller and moral allegory is all the more insightful, daring, introspective and groundbreaking when taken in the context of his era.”

Amen was particularly intrigued by Hatcher’s concept of having a handful of actors play multiple roles throughout the play — the most striking being the playwright’s decision to have four different actors play Edward Hyde.

“This approach is not only very challenging for the actors involved, but also stylistically exciting and provocative in that it allows us to explore the multiple layers of Edward Hyde, who in turn represents the multiple layers of Dr. Henry Jekyll. Or is it the other way around?”

In either case, Golden West audiences are in for an unsettling experience next week as “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” unfolds as the first production on Golden West College’s remodeled Mainstage Theater.

If You Go

What: “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”

Where: Golden West College Mainstage Theater, 15744 Goldenwest St., Huntington Beach

When: Opening Nov. 6 and continuing 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays through Nov. 15

Cost: $10 to $12

Call: (714) 895-8150

TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Independent.