Jekyll and Hyde

Jekyll & Hyde On Stage at the Reedley Opera House

by Terrance Mc Arthur


If someone comes off as a really nice person, but suddenly turns mean and nasty, we call him a “Jekyll and Hyde,” all because of Robert Louis Stevenson and a bad dream. That dream, of a man physically turning from good to evil, became the 1886 novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Over the last 133 years, the story has appeared on stage, on movie screens, and on television countless times (I actually wrote script and lyrics for a musical comedy version presented when I was in high school in 1969), and in varying degrees of adaptation (Remember Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde (1971)?).

The Diabolical Miss Hyde By Viola Carr

by Terrance Mc Arthur



You remember Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, don’t you? The man who was beside himself? Two personalities, good and evil, battling for control of one body? Now imagine that there was a daughter, stuck with the same struggle in a steampunk-fantasy version of London and you’ll have The Diabolical Miss Hyde by Viola Carr.