The Cast

Alex Honzen as Utterson the Lawyer
Derek Smart as Jekyll the Scientist
Ron Kroll as Hyde

The Crew

Adapted and Directed by Bob Fisher
Set Design by Patrick McCarthy
Lights: Patrick McCarthy and Lisa Ruhland

Special thanks to

Peculiar Works Project (Barry Rowell, Catherine Porter, Ralph Lewis), Sean Hopp at Mathbat, Zac Davis, Bob Karcher, Arik Martin, Peter Gil-Sheridan, Brian Reilly, Michael Martin, Frank Platis, Kristy Kambanis, Chris Mathews, Shana Orlowsky, Maria Stephens, Rubber Monkey Puppet Company, and to all our friends in the arts community who have believed in us and shown their support.

Critic's Choice
Chicago Reader

CLAY CONTINENT, The Mammals Theatre Company, at The Space. The Mammals have been plying their extravagantly minimal trade for three years now, interpreting the classics in gory, surreal productions that range from smart straight-ahead camp to baffling high-art abstraction. Decidedly the latter (but terrific) was last year's Clay Continent, adapter-director Bob Fisher's delirious collaged-text take on Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This remount is polished and perfected, still challenging but more accessible. Though they've sacrificed some of the original's chaotic edge, the Mammals have thus achieved a cool intelligibility crucial to such language-intensive work: the blocking has been streamlined, and the sound design--previously a sometimes overwhelming echolalic tornado--has been cleaned up yet retains its throbbing menace. Actors Alex Honzen, Derek Smart, and Ron Kroll were excellent the first time around but bring more authority and focus here to the collective description of schizophrenia. And though the script's twists were unusually well fitted to the difficult, dungeonlike Space, they now seem inextricable from its tortuous, claustrophobic architecture (with credit due especially to Patrick McCarthy's evocative backdrop of scrawled diagrams and formulas). This Clay Continent may lack the raw fury of last year's edition, but its elegant, poetic dread is still more impressive--a chilling whisper to that production's scream. The Space, 4829 N. Damen, Chicago, 773-293-0431. Through February 2: Fridays-Saturdays, 8 PM.

- Brian Nemtusak

New City
Feb 22, 2001

Blood and guts fans, here's your dish. This penny dreadful of a play, inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde myth and directed by The Mammals' Bob Fisher. does an excellent job of creating mood. Three actors, all ghoulishly made up, stalk the awkward black basement that is the Space Theatre, headset mikes amping their every breath. The characters don't speak so much in dialogue as they do in poetry, often weaving their individual nightmares together to great fugue effect. The hour-long show devolves into Grand Guignol as the acts of violence grow ever fiercer; before it's over they'll leave nothing to the imagination. (Stay in your seat for a minute or two after the applause and you can watch them mop up.) in case cannibalism and torture aren't enough, they've thrown some homoerotic S-and-M tableaux in for good measuer as Hyde toys with his mirror image. Although there's no single prescribed season for such fare "Continent" nevertheless seems to have anticipated Halloween by many months

- Web Behrens

A little history about the Development of CLAY CONTINENT

CLAY CONTINENT was first presented on September 20, 1998 in Big Art in Small Places ‘98 at Charas/El Bohio Cultural & Community Center with the following cast:

Utterson: David Gilsheridan
Jekyll: Brian Reilly
Hyde: Michael Martin

Peculiar Works Project in association with the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab produced the first three scenes in a site based performance executed in the basement of a once abandoned school house.

CLAY CONTINENT received its second presentation as a workshopped performance on August 3, 2000 at the Space, Chicago with the following cast:

Utterson: Derek Smart
Jekyll: Ron Kroll
Hyde: Frank Platis

Inspired by the grotesque portraiture of Francis Bacon and the novel 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde', CLAY CONTINENT is an aural pageant of diabolical villainy constructed with various excerpts from the stories of Robert Louis Stevenson, Dostoyevsky, and Edgar Allen Poe. Recounting the story of one doctor’s desperate attempt to overcome his own evil through the use of science as he conceals the tragic results of his continual failure, CLAY CONTINENT creates a compelling soundscape in which the multiple personalities inhabiting the doctor’s body vie for dominance over their collective flesh.

Throughout the performance, the actors representing Jekyll and Hyde often speak their lines simultaneously. In performance, simultaneity can capture the essence of chaos and, when employed artfully, embody the tension of sensory overload/schizophrenia. By utilizing technology combined with vocal technique, the actors create a series of polyphonic confrontations similar to orchestrated music/opera. The result is a compelling collage of sound in which the audience may choose to focus their precise attention on a particular voice or to negotiate comprehension of the total soundscape within a more chaotic forward progression balanced carefully on the midst of ambient chaos.

The challenge we face, as an ensemble is to discover a process of achieving that careful balance which will aid rather than hinder the audience’s appreciation of the story. The environmental setting of the original workshop production influenced the development of the piece. Despite lacking the means to simulate the experience of descending into the bowels of an abandon schoolhouse, an additional goal of the next workshop/production will be discovering ways of pushing the limits of environmental theater within the confines of our small performance space.