(Full disclosure: I have friendships with members of the crew and cast of this production.)
It is a problem when you blackout after drinking at a party and cannot remember what happened. Did you kiss someone? Send an embarrassing text? Beat a local Lord to death?
You did some terrible things last night and the police are on their way.
Question is, what did you do?
Jekyll/Hyde is a ninety minute interactive game taking place on the streets surrounding Waterloo station and is documented and played using a mobile phone. Players can take part in teams or solo. Having agreed to play by myself, as my associates were all busy or felt the experience sounded too intense, I had a great time traveling at my own speed having my own individual and unique adventure. Besides: friends can slow you down, or so I told myself as I dashed along the South Bank.
(The following contains minor spoilers.)
At the start of the Jekyll/Hyde adventure, I am met outside the VAULT tunnels by your friend and lawyer Edmonton (Tim Kennington), where I am given a map and your “diary” (an online interface, accessed via your smartphone). It is through this diary that you can solve puzzles and keep track of your memories. As I travel further along the path, I meet the chemist Frey (played by Daniel Chrisostomou) and the psychoanalyst Goldmann (Chloe Mashiter). It turns out Frey gave me a potion last night… and now I have blanks in my memory. I need to solve puzzles and get answers. Unlike other games of this type, I am not competing against other teams to score points, but rather am on my own path to discover just how wicked I have been previously.
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The Jekyll/Hyde map marks locations for my missing memories. I solve trivia puzzles set in the surrounding area; I found these to be reasonably challenging. Some answers could be guessed at, while others asked me to observe local landmarks or obtain dates. Upon solving enough puzzles, I unlock a memory and am asked a question with preset answers. For example: What did you take when you robbed a store? These options score points for me and fit into various categories, such as “egotism” or “savagery.” My diary also documents my crimes by showing newspaper headlines from the morning papers, reporting on my misdeeds to the public.
I have three “friends” are scattered around the area. Upon meeting these characters I are offered alternative endings. And they have a surprising amount of information at their fingertips about what exactly I did last night. I have choices to make: Do I hand myself over to the courts, take to an asylum to protect the public, or — instead—let the darkness in me run wild?
Spoiler alert: as it turns out I had a rather mild time of it all in Jekyll/Hyde. I had jumped into the River Thames for the applause, heckled a bad play, and started a party. (Other players had apparently murdered policemen.) My friend Edmonton suggested I would probably get off quite lightly. I feel I manage to regain a good number of memories by myself, but the playing area for this game is vast and the way the memories unlock is not always intuitive. I soon found that I was unlocking memories that were on the other side of the map or close to where I had previously been, rather than near my current area.
However, the ending to the experience was rather too binary for my liking and seemed to negate the choices I had made. It involved us standing around in a courtyard while the actors spoke in their heightened Victorian way. Additionally, I was unsure quite when in time our misadventures were all supposed to be happening. It should have been Victorian and yet we were answering questions about Laurence Olivier or the Festival of Britain.
It was a very chilly evening (which I cannot blame on the company) and a lot of time is spent by the Thames, so I was pleased I was wearing a warm jumper and sensible shoes. This show does reveal some of the exciting hidden spots in the area, it makes you slow down and become more observant of your surroundings. All in all, Jekyll/Hyde enabled me to learn some interesting facts, even as I hurried through the chill February evening.
Jekyll/Hyde was created by Fire Hazard Games and has now concluded.
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