Good guy gone bad in 'Jekyll and Hyde'
Kyle Burch is a really nice guy.
So much so that when the Shelby Township senior's friends heard he was cast for the very nasty role of Mr. Hyde, some questioned whether he could pull it off.
"It's not like I'm proving them wrong," Burch said. "But it's nice to have a chance to be not me."
Central Michigan University theater will be performing "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" to open its fall season. Opening night for the classic suspense drama takes place today at 7:30 p.m. in Bush Theatre.
The classic play tells the tale of a gifted scientist, Dr. Jekyll, played by Burch, who, in his pent-up frustration with “respectable” life, creates a powerful potion that unleashes his inner brute, the wicked Mr. Hyde.
Burch, who is studying theatre and has been performing on stage for the better part of the past seven years, has had several significant roles in CMU productions in the past, including Vladimir in the 1953 absurdist play "Waiting for Godot" and Tom Snout the Tinker in the Shakespeare classic "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
However, Dr. Jekyll and his counterpart are the first title characters he has performed on a CMU stage. It presents other challenges for the experienced actor, as well.
"Rather than playing one character in one show and a different character in another show, it's playing two characters in one show and finding how to make them different without extensive makeup or extensive costume change," Burch said.
The version of the play the troupe is performing, written by the playwright Noah Smith and first performed in 1999, is substantially different from other versions students have seen of the popular tale, according to director Timothy Connors.
"In all of the movie versions, the question is, 'Who is Mr Hyde?' In this version, there is no question in the audience; they know who Hyde is," Connors said. "The playwright doesn't attempt to disguise that at all. It's much more a play about the choices Dr. Jekyll makes, and whether those are the right choices to make"
