Utterson

Jen Ellison as Jekyll

Don Hall as Utterson

Dave Goss as Edward Hyde

Jekyll investigates Hyde

What the Chicago Reader said about Clay Continent

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.

- Brian Nemtusak

More Rehearsal

A couple shots from our blocking rehearsal

We blocked the first third of the show. It is a joy to be working with such a talented cast.

What the New City had to say about Clay Continent

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

Script Excerpt from CLAY CONTINENT

Excerpt from Clay Continent

JEKYLL
It is said that Cleopatra was fond of sticking gold pins into the breasts of her slave girls and enjoyed their cries and writhings. You will say that this was relatively speaking, in a barbarian age; that our age is also barbarian, because pins are also being stuck in people; that even today, though man has learned to see more clearly on occasion than he did in barbarian ages, he is still far from having habituated himself to behave according to the dictates of reason and science.

HYDE
Of course, who can tell what people may think up out of boredom! After all, gold pins are also stuck into bodies out of boredom. What’s rotten, and this is again myself speaking is that, for all we know, people might even welcome the gold pins.

Dave Goss as Edward Hyde

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Mammals Theater Company

Don Hall is Mister Utterson

From the Mammals Archive

Alex Honzen as Mister Utterson in the Mammals premiere production of Clay Continent

Dave Goss is Edward Hyde

From the Mammals Archive

Ron Kroll as Edward Hyde in the Mammals premiere production of Clay Continent

Jen Ellison is Henry Jekyll

From the Mammals Archive

Derek Smart as Jekyll from the Mammals premiere production of Clay Continent

Clay Continent Rehearsals Begin!

We had a great first read thru and a ton of fun. Here are some photos from the rehearsal


Dave Goss as Edward Hyde


Don Hall as Utterson


Jen Ellison as Dr. Henry Jekyll



Juan Castaneda


The cast examines pictures of Francis Bacon paintings