Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (play)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Playbill for London production in 1888
Written by	Thomas Russell Sullivan
Characters	Henry Jekyll/Edward Hyde
Date premiered	May 9, 1887 (1887-05-09)
Place premiered	Boston Museum
Original language	English
Genre	Gothic Horror Science fiction Thriller
Setting	London

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a four-act play written by Thomas Russell Sullivan in collaboration with the actor Richard Mansfield. It is an adaptation of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, an 1886 novella written by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. The story focuses on Henry Jekyll, a respected London doctor, and his involvement with Edward Hyde, a loathsome criminal. After Hyde murders the father of Jekyll's fiancée, Jekyll's friends discover that he and Hyde are the same person. Jekyll has developed a potion that allows him to transform himself into Hyde and back again. When he runs out of the potion, he is trapped in his Hyde form and commits suicide before he can be arrested.

After reading the novella, Mansfield was intrigued by the opportunity to play a dual role. He secured the right to adapt the story for the stage in both the United States and the United Kingdom, and asked Sullivan to write the adaptation. The play debuted in Boston in May 1887, then a revised version opened on Broadway in September 1887. Mansfield's performance as the dual character was acclaimed by critics. The show was popular in both New York and on tour, and Mansfield was invited to bring it to London. It opened there in August 1888, just before the start of the Jack the Ripper murders. Some press reports compared the murderer to the Jekyll/Hyde character, and Mansfield was suggested as a possible suspect. Despite significant press attention, the London production was a financial failure. Mansfield's company continued to perform the play on tours of the United States until shortly before Mansfield's death in 1907.

In writing the stage adaptation, Sullivan made several changes to the story. These included the addition of a romantic interest for Jekyll and a stronger moral contrast between Jekyll and Hyde. These changes have been adopted by many subsequent adaptations, including several film versions of the story that adapted material directly from the play. These films included a 1912 adaptation directed by Lucius Henderson, a 1920 adaptation directed by John S. Robertson, and a 1931 adaptation directed by Rouben Mamoulian, which garnered an Academy Award for Best Actor for Fredric March. A 1941 adaptation directed by Victor Fleming was a remake of the 1931 version.