In July, Lake City Playhouse staged Oliver!, the first production to be held on its own stage in four years. The summer show signaled a milestone for the Coeur d'Alene community theater, which has surmounted no end of setbacks in its effort to reestablish itself following the dissolution of The Modern Theater in 2016.
According to Brooke Wood, the theater's artistic director and a tireless force behind the "Save Lake City Playhouse" campaign, Oliver! was a practical choice as much as an artistic one. Not only could it be rehearsed around the ongoing building renovations, it had all-ages appeal to help fuel ticket sales.
Tomorrow, the revitalized Lake City Playhouse hits another milestone when Jekyll & Hyde opens an approximately three-week run. The 1990 musical based on the famous Robert Louis Stevenson novella officially launches the venue's first full season since going quiet during the COVID pandemic.
Wood says that Jekyll & Hyde, an ominous tale of one man's scientific pursuit devolving into a losing battle with his own baser impulses, was a very intentional choice that speaks to the theater's range.
"Because we just did Oliver!, which had a lot of kids in it, and which we love doing, I wanted to make sure that people understand that we do it all," she says. "I wanted it to be a piece that stood on its own and ... had a little toothiness to it, something for people to chew on. And I felt like doing a piece that has not been done in the area in a while was something of importance."
When directing Oliver!, Wood says she deliberately introduced "more grit" into the production to counter the common tendency to do "squeaky clean" versions. It's about pickpockets, workhouses and street urchins, after all.
Related
With Jekyll & Hyde, a show that likewise spends its share of time in the brothels and asylums of London's seedy underbelly, there are fewer risks of playing things too clean. Wood has, in her words, "dialed it down" to revel less in the gore and depravity of its murders, for example, and focus more on the all-too-human relationships that are at the heart of the story.
"I don't think this is a production that necessarily needs more grit in it," she says. "It's going to be more about the actors because we have some of the greatest vocalists I've heard in a very long time all on stage together."
Playing the titular dual role is Oskar Owens, who audiences might recognize from his turn as Tully in last year's production of Escape to Margaritaville at Spokane Valley Summer Theatre.
As both Dr. Henry Jekyll and his alter ego Edward Hyde, Owens has to inhabit two characters with opposing personalities that ultimately end up fighting for dominance. His salvation, if it's to come at all, will be through his feelings for lovers like Emma (played by Kylee Fernandez-Lavier) and Lucy (Kalla Mort) or close friends like John Utterson (Daniel Hunt).
"I've been obsessed with this show for a very, very long time," Owens says, "and until Brooke mentioned it to me, I never looked at it as though it was a platonic love story between John Utterson and Henry Jekyll. It truly is a story told through Utterson's accounts and memory. It's fascinating when you look at it that way."
In a symbolic representation of Jekyll's deteriorating psychological state, set designer Jeremy Whittington is hanging hand-drawn sketches that will gradually become more and more off-axis.
"By the end," Wood says, "it'll be all cattywampus and skewed ... like his mind."
Lighting is designed to play a big part, too. The Women's Gift Alliance recently awarded Lake City Playhouse a $30,000 grant to modernize its aging lighting system. Jekyll & Hyde is the first show to make use of the 18 new LED lights and light board. The upgraded equipment will also factor into the theater's upcoming opportunities for drama classes and tech training.
Sept. 20 to Oct. 6; Thu-Sat at 7:30 pm, Sun at 2 pm, $27-$30
Lake City Playhouse, 1320 E. Garden Ave., Coeur d'Alene
lakecityplayhouse.org, 208-771-7061
And for a certain economy of space with this production, Whittington and Wood are incorporating levels to showcase the live five-person band led by Heather Brown without obscuring the action.
"It's going to make our stage feel huge to people, which is exciting," Wood says.
One advantage is that it will create space for a set piece around the reprise of the song "Façade," which will have Hyde's victims arranging themselves in a haunting formation.
Owens, for his part, is relishing the opportunity to return to the stage where he got his start and play a complex lead character who prompts the audience to reflect on the ways in which we might "embrace a little bit of that evil [in us] because we want to stand by something that we believe so much."
"I really think that the community is in for a wild emotional ride and a phenomenal theater experience when they come see this show," he says. "It will do the things that art was meant to do — to teach, to show and to entertain." ♦
