Who are we? What is the purpose of our existence? These are questions many of us constantly ask ourselves. As such, they rank high above others on the priority list, whether they address pressing world issues, catastrophes of any proportion, or the very survival of anything that is not connected to us. That is exactly the story of the Young Lady in White. Photographed in the summer of 1932, and never developed due to the events that followed (the Nazis coming to power in 1933 and the

political changes they introduced), our protagonist is destined to live her life as a negative for 28,000 nights. The only company in her solitude and everlasting wait for her artist (who, she hopes, will come back to developed her) is the charming Chada – a cat that has never gotten further than sketch level. The negative girl and the sketch cat spend decades (from 1932 to 2009) in looking through the bathroom window at the world as it develops: atrocities during WWII, the total destruction brought on by the use of the atomic bomb, and victimized civilians in the post-war era. The girl doesn’t have much appreciation of the history that unfolds before eyes (except for the occasional ejaculation of surprise), but she listens to Chada, develops a strong companionship with him, and, at the end, destroys him for telling her an unwanted truth – that she is no more than an unknown negative, and that she will never be more than that. Finally, 10 years after the Berlin Wall fell, his prediction proved to be wrong: during the final clean-up of the area, a municipal engineer finds her in the darkroom and takes her with him. To be developed? Well, that is not the point of the story, which makes this ending of the play an artificial and rushed edition rather than a necessary ending statement.  …

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The conflict between good and evil is the focal point of almost any drama. The difference in Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic tale is that he places the never-ending struggle within an individual.

In his fascinating new take on Stevenson’s 1886 novella, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, acclaimed U.S. playwright/screenwriter Jeffrey Hatcher expands the facets of evil to show Hyde as aspects of four characters, who also play other roles in Dr. Jekyll’s life.

Neither does he allow Jekyll to be a white knight, as the ‘good’ doctor continues his laboratory experiments, all the time denying responsibility for the murder and mayhem around him — evil that may be the result of the release of his underlying desires after he swallows one of his potions. And Hyde, as he tries to save the one person he has learned to care for, is not completely evil, for he tries to send her away to stop himself from harming her. …

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Poster for Kanata Theatre

American playwright Jeffrey Hatcher has created an astonishing new stage version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case Of Doctor Jekyll And Mr. Hyde. It astonishes because of the way it refines and deepens Stevenson’s preoccupation with the idea of a dual nature lurking within every human being, also because of its audacity in offering its own spin on what happens when the respected Henry Jekyll’s lab experiments turn him into the homicidal, cane-wielding Mr. Hyde.

The original novel remains a creepy read. And Kanata Theatre’s sterling production of Hatcher’s play ensures a similar frisson. Director Wendy Wagner, assisted here by Ilona Henkelman, shrouds this piece in atmosphere. Skeletal images lurk behind the fog and gloom, and even the play’s brightly lit moments seem imprisoned in an impenetrable darkness. The existence of creatures and things that go bump in the night seems entirely plausible.

So yes, this is a mood piece. But at Kanata it also moves with a bracing energy and offers a bouquet of fine ensemble acting.

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Ed Hoopman and Laura Latreille. Photo: Mark S. Howard 

Sarah Ruhl’s haunting epistolary play Dear Elizabeth, now at Boston’s Lyric Stage, is drawn from poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell’s thirty year correspondence, ended by Lowell’s death. The relationship began in 1947 at a party when they met at an important point in each of their lives. At age thirty, Lowell had won the Pulitzer Prize and the thirty-six year old Bishop’s first book of poems had just been published. They instantly took to one another as fellow poets, although Lowell’s attraction to Bishop was also sexual. A lesbian, Bishop loved him as an irreplaceable friend. Fittingly, the written word was their means of communication. They seldom saw each other; Bishop lived in Brazil with her lover Lota while Lowell resided mostly in the US.

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