The English Miscellany

Immense creative opportunities arise from the adaptation of literary texts to stage productions, but too often they are merely slavish imitations and contribute only to heritage theatre. Fortunately, playwright Evan Placey has chosen to use R. L. Stevenson’s late nineteenth-century source text for inspiration in a way that connects with a range of highly contemporary issues. It’s a brilliantly thought-provoking production that contributes to current debates about science and gender, patriarchy and heteronormativity, women’s liberation, and social media as an outlet for misogyny and as an opportunity for emancipation. On an another level, it is a deeply emotional experience that is embodied in the actors’ ability to communicate issues with an emotional urgency.  The play exposes how performances and scripts create gender roles and suggests how they can be re-written. In particular, the second half of the play provides a stronger emphasis on (post)modern perspectives as...