Review: Jekyll & Hyde at Finnish National Ballet by Val Caniparoli

I got the chance to see the ballet version of Jekyll and Hyde at the Finnish National Opera and Ballet. The thing that struck and absorbed me to make sure I get a seat was the amazing Instagram advertisement. There were two men dancing in sync in red lights. Just a few clicks and I knew they were Jekyll and Hyde. I wonder why so few institutions and groups have grasped to take advantage of a simple, movie-like teaser peace for a performance. It really grasps your interest.

The story of Jekyll and Hyde on the other hand was a little mysterious to me. I had heard some bits from the musical and knew its basic idea that evil grows inside the main character and in the end they cannot be separated.

I visited the introduction (teosesittely) that was held before the show on Friday 21st. It gave me a lot of information on how the show was constructed but also on the symbolic motives and themes.

Caniparoli has been wanting to translate the story of Jekyll and Hyde into dance ever since he was little. The main theme is that there is a dark side that lives underneath in everone. Finnish National Ballet asked Caniparoli for this particular piece and he chose his dream-team he could trust. For example the Ballet's dramaturg Carey Perloff has been helping the performers to really get into the character.

Caniparoli has said that music builds the ground for this piece and that he really has to believe in the music. The performance itself starts and ends with the same song: starts with the writer Stevenson on stage, suffering, ending with the "monster" Hyde on stage with Stevenson that he has created as if as into his own image, both suffering.

The piece itself starts with ominous and tormenting tones that last till the very beginning of the show. The painted image is excellent, establishing the color red, linking it to Hyde. Before the show starts, out of the blue two people start to laugh behind me quite loudly. Accompanied with the sounds I just described I totally felt like being in Edgar Wright's movie, as if my social anxiety due to my highly sensitive nature had a scenery and a sound everyone else could witness too.

From the introduction I learnt that the writer Stevenson was on hard drugs while writing his book. He had a lot of chronic pain.

In the first minutes we get to see how a nurse comes to inject some medicine into his blood and so, through dance, he shows how the medicine goes up his arm. Not long and Jekyll arrives from beneath Stevenson's bed, as if a boogie man. The gesture, hovering a hand over an arm is a repetitive choreo that Jekyll and later also Hyde copies from Stevenson. Overall I liked this idea of seeing the writer manipulate the happenings and his own characters into their destiny that is sadly quite similar to his own.

Behind important set pieces there is a dark wall that reflects everything that happens on stage. It's indeed good foreshadowing because later Hyde represents himself first from there as well. One's shadow is always there, lurking in the backgrounds.

David Israel Reynoso has done a great job in costume design. He has taken influences from the Victorian Era but has kept all simple enough. There are costumes I can easily imagine to see also this day and era. Somehow the nurse's flowing bright dress somehow started the whole show and fiction for me. The contrast with the patients' white clothes, which are little dirty, is emphasized with good lighting design by Jim French.

The patients' choreo evokes compassion in me. Someone moves their bed to position by walking on their hands, legs laying on the bed. Overall the ensemble work is very detailed and personal. I can see how "everyone has put something from themselves into their roles", as it was introduced. In the choreo I could see elements of wanting to survive ("pysyä pinnalla"), of lust and desires and finally of self-destructive tendencies. The trembling that comes from the beds and echo into our ears really has an effect.

One of my favorite scenes in all its simplicity was when one patient gets the medicine from Jekyll and goes through its effect in a short time. The whole crowd reacted to it and the timings were dynamic and spot on.

Another great moment was how the rainy street was built. The mellow feeling of it, movie-like sound effects and nonchalant movements. How the lamps effortlessly emerged!

As it was told in the introduction there really is a great contrast between the public lifes and private lifes of our male characters, which is also historically accurate.

In the ballroom the style is classical and romantic but in the brothel the grasps from men in the dance choreos are really demanding. Nelly's hair is in a clean bun while Rowena's hair is wild. The happenings in the brothel were my favorite because of its theatrical aspects. Main things happened in the middle but there was a lot of interesting and believable things going on at the sides. I'm also happy there weren't only female prostitutes but all sorts of ones. It is moments like this when you figure: "Right, it actually could have been like that!"

The brothel is located under the ground. It's done with a fine illusion where we can see our performers passing by a window that's high up in the left corner. They come down the stairs into the brothel and it really brings a feeling into the setting. Something secretive, hidden from the daylight.

Everyone else stops and Jekyll is shown to suffer, which works. One can seem okay from the outside, but from the inside they're burning. When Hyde shows up yet again for a small while the horns of the decorative animal heads also start to glow in red. Details, details! Red is a big motive in this peace and to me tells about blood and adrenaline, of desires you want to execute but can't because of the social norms and status you have.

The performance is brave. It feels like anything could happen at any moment.

While letting Hyde take control there was a little too much repetition in my opinion in terms of going through the red door. But maybe it was all about tiring out the prey, Jekyll.

"The performance is brave. It feels like anything could happen at any moment."

After the intermission the ominous mood creeps into the ballroom already through the music. Things are not so much under the rug anymore. It might have been a hi-hat drum that gave a clock-like ticking before things started to unfold.

Hyde shows up and his gestures and dancing style is grand and cocky. He even makes keen eyecontact with the audience after some tricks as if asking: "Did you see that? Did you see me?" He yearns after Nelly's presence and acts possessively. Nelly gives him high status. Hyde doesn't have time to dance politely with Nelly's mother like he did in the past. He is cold and calculating.

There are yet again more disruptions of reality and hallucinations. What is true and what is not? Orphan children gather around Hyde as if to revenge. The children are talented young ones and the scene itself had a good arc. It ends with Hyde hissing the kids away in a primal way.

Now when Hyde is gone and Jekyll is back to normal - at least for a while - his friends come over as if to mock and imitate him and how he acted at the party. There are several mental health cases outside of fiction that could lead a person to a state like that. There was something so real about it. Were they even his friends to start with?

Nonetheless I was most moved by Rowena's fate. The setting was nasty and I bet most of us predicted what was gonna happen. Everything went in cold flow and there was nothing to be done than shed some tears.

Now it's Hyde's turn to be aware of his own evilness when he lets Nelly run. Jekyll and Hyde are now mixed and there's no turning back. The grand finale is at hand, which is truly breath-taking. I was very much in the zone the whole time so I've got nothing to write about it - which in itself truly is something! What I saw was accurate and absurd at the same time.

There was this one thing towards the very ending I would have wanted to see: Hyde, laying on the bed a little while longer after he fell just like the patients did in the beginning in the same choreo. He could have laid there until the next song started. We would have needed just a small break after all the action!

Nevertheless the very ending of this performance is symbolic and neat, though the pacing was just a little off here and there. Perhaps too much underlining in terms of how he ended up in the same condition as his patients.

All in all Jekyll and Hyde is a successful piece that brings forth one's dark side and the battles with one's demons, delivering the story through dance. We can be proud of the fact that it was created and performed during crazy corona times here in Finland. No wonder it is sold overseas. Congrats!

Text: Rosanna Ilo Liuski
Photo: Mirka Kleemola

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