The Island of Dr. Moreau
       
All photos on page - Richard B. Watson in The Island of Dr. Moreau

By Eric Hissom
from the book by H.G. Wells
Directed by April-Dawn Gladu
Goldman Theater (118 Seats)

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A shipwrecked man washes up on an isolated paradise where the machinations of an evil scientist run free. Strange experiments, unworldly beasts, and high adventure mark the PlaLab premiere of the H.G. Wells classic in a one-man tour-de-force thriller

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REVIEWS

Chilling Drama is a Strong Drink

The Orlando Weekly
by Emily Thorpe
published 3/13/03

Playwright Eric Hissom's shuddering study of the H.G. Wells classic The "Island of Dr. Moreau" is a one-man show that travels from a shadowy British pub to a South Pacific paradise crawling with bizarre part-man, part-animal creatures. With a gifted actor, an ingenious script, gorgeous sets and costumes, and a bit of wizardry that can't help but arouse admiration, Hissom's adaptation accomplishes what the book so effectively did more than 100 ago: It pits man against nature to explore themes of humanity and morality, and examines the horrific price of playing God.

The production proceeds in feverish fashion, thanks to the gutsy enthusiasm of actor Richard B. ("Doc") Watson. Watson begins the tale as the very civilized Edward Prendick, who looks every bit the English gentleman, except for nervous, animal-like glances over his shoulder. Perched on a barstool, a weary Prendick spews a spellbinding account of how he came to feel so alien in society after surviving a shipwreck that left him in the hands of a madman.

April-Dawn Gladu's direction has a hallucinogenic effect, as she puts her nimble actor to the task of playing every character in Prendick's tormented memory: Montgomery, the boisterous American who pulls the half-dead traveler from a dinghy lost at sea; the ominous Dr. Moreau, who invites Prendick onto his island to join in a mysterious biological project; the sensual cat-woman who becomes Prendick's lover and savior; and a host of talking deformed beasts born from twisted science.

As Watson fluently transforms from one character into the next without a pause in the story, you will doubt your sanity: Is this really just one man?

The crew's talents also contribute to the play's rich texture. Wendy Hiller's scenic design turned the small Goldman Theater into a tropical landscape of tangled vines with seemingly endless space for Watson to play off of. Denise Warner's clever, Victorian-era costume designs supports Watson's rotating roles with subtle yet distinctive changes. Eric Haugen's lighting contributes to the blue-green visions of Pacific breezes, the anonymous umbrage of an any-place pub, and the blinding whiteness of the doctor's operating room. James Cleveland's eerie sound effects creep up the back of one's neck and stay there until the standing ovation.

As our society continues to challenge the role of science in our evolution, we can still relate to the character of Prednick, a man, who, in the end, can only drink to the days when certain realities were left untested.

Hissom, who's usually more visible in his many lead acting roles, spent three years crafting this chilling drama under the auspices of the Orlando-UCF Shake-speare Festival's PlayLab program. He calls his creation "home-brewed," and it's a strong drink.

Moreau' Brings the Darkness to Life

The Orlando Sentinel
by Betsey Maupin
published 3/5/03

Somewhere in the ocean northeast of Samoa, Moreau's island is teeming with life.

Apes, wolves, panthers, pumas -- all of those, and the humans who keep them, and the mysterious beings whose eyes glow red in the dark. All of them live and hunt in a remote South Seas jungle in The Island of Dr. Moreau, where one man gives breath to them all.

That man is Richard B. Watson, the only actor in Eric Hissom's gripping new drama. Watson plays all the creatures on Moreau's island - scientist, ship captain, a curious being that is part-man, part-ape - and he adapts to each new creature with such invention that he never seems alone on the stage.

It's a wonderful performance in a wild ride of a play, brought to life in an Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival production that sets your heart to pounding and keeps your eyes riveted to the stage. Performed in the festival's little Goldman Theater, The Island of Dr. Moreau is as graphic and grisly as a dime-store thriller. It grabs you by the back of the neck and doesn't let go.

Hissom based his drama on the 1896 novel by H.G. Wells, a novel that is part adventure story, part science fiction and mostly forgotten now except for a trio of horror-movie adaptations. But that's all to the good, because the stage version keeps you guessing. Unlike the Shakespeare festival's takes on Dracula and Frankenstein, this story is a great big mystery, one that keeps your mind racing along with your heart.

This new stage version was developed through the festival's PlayLab program, a three-year-old series of readings and workshops that Hissom directs. Like Around the World in Eighty Days, last spring's production of a PlayLab script, The Island of Dr. Moreau is not quite a world premiere: This one had one previous production, at Cape May Stage in New Jersey, last fall.

In the Shakespeare Festival's production, Wendy Hiller's design turns the Goldman stage from a dark English pub into an ill-fated ship and then a creepy jungle island, with rough-hewn log walls laced with leafy vines and ropes that can be rustled or pulled from backstage. There Edward Prendick, in full Victorian gentleman's attire, sets sail on an adventure that will change him more than he dreams.

Prendick's ship is wrecked, and he winds up on an island with Montgomery, a strangely cavalier medical man from Savannah, Ga., and Moreau, a British doctor who is performing mysterious biological research behind locked doors. Other creatures inhabit the island as well -- a man with a mane of long black hair and the large, furry, pointed ears of a dog; a man with the eyes of an eagle; a man who swings from trees like an ape. Soon enough Prendick realizes that these are not men, after all, and that his own safety is in doubt.

Hissom has done a terrific job adapting the novel for the stage: The story is always clear, one character shifts seamlessly into the next, and Hissom's mild leavenings of humor break the intensity of the drama just when they should. (I had only two small quibbles -- once, early on, when the script forces Watson to play two characters at once, and later with the contrived way it breaks for intermission.)

And director April-Dawn Gladu has made the show quick and clean, with a restless energy that nags at you: Something is going to happen, you know it, the minute you take a breath.

As Prendick, Watson is haunted from the start: He starts at noises, and his eyes look through you as if there's something inside you he's trying to see. Watson is a very physical actor -- when an unseen character picks him up, his chest lifts as if pulled from above -- but much of his acting is so understated you barely notice it. When he becomes the red-headed ship's captain, he pulls on a knit cap and his face seems to turn sun-burnt; when he becomes the ape-man, his arms seem to lengthen on their own. His Montgomery is guileless and almost always half reclining; his Moreau has the calm, threatening tone of Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter and the same small, mirthless smile.

But it's Prendick, not Moreau, who is the compelling character here -- a man trying to make sense of what he sees, a man open to wonder, a man tortured by what he experiences and what he has to do.

Denise Warner's buttoned-up costume, Eric Haugen's gloomy lighting and James Cleveland's creepy sound all add facets to the production, which becomes almost too visceral on occasion: In a theater as small as the Goldman, I'm not sure the call of an animal need sound quite that painful or a carcass need be quite so openly displayed.

But those few horror-movie moments rarely distract from this whopping good tale of a man who learns from animals and of animals trying to learn from man. There's a real human inside this character on the stage, this fictional Edward Prendick, and you wonder with him as he tries to sort things out. You can call it adventure, you can call it science fiction - I call it good old-fashioned drama, and I say catch it while you can.
  

                                                                 Last Updated: 05/06/2007                    Copyright Orlando Shakespeare Theater