Jonathan Holloway
English playwright and director Jonathan Holloway is in Hong Kong to stage a new adaptation of “Jekyll and Hyde” in collaboration with local mainstay Chung Ying Theatre Company. Evelyn Lok speaks to the director ahead of the show.
Founder of the venerable Red Shift Theatre Company, Jonathan Holloway has also turned his hand to writing original BBC productions such as “Big Time”—an imagined meeting between Shakespeare and Cervantes. We catch up with him while he's in Hong Kong working with Chung Ying Theatre on an adaptation “Jekyll and Hyde."
HK Magazine: How do you feel about the collaboration with Chung Ying Theatre?
Jonathan Holloway: It’s been an incredibly positive experience: Coming here with a bunch of British artists and integrating into Chung Ying in order to create the production, but to also generate debate on the kinds of artistic decisions we make. One of the reasons why I’m here is to make a contribution towards delivering theater which makes demands on its audience and shifts from being “service industry” to being an art form.
HK: What do you mean by that?
JH: There’s an old saying in theater: audiences think they know what they want, but what they really want is to be taken by surprise. I think it’s what produces a viable theater ecology—by which I mean money has to flow through it, to enable the work to be made. And so you need a mixed economy of entertainment-orientated commercial theater, and also theater which makes demands—and isn’t necessarily for everyone.
HK: How are you adapting the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to stage?
JH: Doing a straight adaptation actually doesn’t serve the original piece of work. The original was written in its time and place. You need to provide a conceit; something that unlocks a piece of work so people will look at it differently. In this case, it’s the idea of casting a woman as Dr. Jekyll. It introduces a lot of issues to do with gender politics: Why would she want to change herself profoundly? What is there that she feels threatened by? In terms of aesthetics, it’s very much a Gothic show. It uses a style you’ll be familiar with, sort of German cabaret of the 1920s and 30s.
HK: You often go for a dark, unsettling aesthetic in your work—what is it about the gloomier side of things that fascinates you?
JH: In a lot of advertising around me, I see a lot of laughing smiling people and up-tempo stuff… but that’s not the whole story, is it? Theater has to reflect all aspects of the human experience, not just happiness, jollity and contentment.