Photos courtesy Joe Williams Bill Stitley, front center, stars as Dr. Jekyll in the MET's upcoming production of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Behind him are, from left, DC Cathro, Karen Paone, Mark Barnhart and Tad Janes as the Hydes. Below, Stitley as Dr. Jekyll, with his love interest Elizabeth, played by Ashley Hall.

In the new rendition of the classic tale of good and evil, Dr. Jekyll (Bill Stitley) tells a friend that the subconscious mind has two paths -- the primal and the civilized self -- but his friend later argues that the human mind is made of many rivers and tributaries, running simultaneously.

To emphasize this concept, playwright Jeffrey Hatcher chose to represent Mr. Hyde with four characters (played by Mark Barnhart, D.C. Cathro, Tad Janes and Karen Paone at the MET) who sometimes share the stage and interact with Dr. Jekyll all at once. This "illuminates different qualities of Hyde," said director Peter Wray. "Every character has a little bit of Hyde in them. ... It's integral to the piece," he continued, "because what he's (Hatcher) illuminating is that there's a little bit of Hyde in all of us."

Mr. Hyde and Elizabeth (Ashley Hall) get together at one point, when Mr. Hyde is a woman, played by Paone -- another modern twist?

"Passion works in all combinations," Wray said. "Allure comes from the feminine side. Hyde is revealing Elizabeth's own dark passions. ... I think it works on a very sensual, erotic level."

Not only do four actors play Hyde, but a total of six actors take on the entire 25-character script.

"I love the challenge of changing characters," said Tad Janes, who plays one of the Mr. Hydes, among other roles. This means quick costume -- or accessory -- changes but also changes in "vocal pattern, physicality, dialect."

At one point, he gets three lines, back to back, each coming from a different character, he mused. "It's the end of one scene, into the next. ... It's all within 30 seconds."

Janes mentioned, too, that Barnhart's Mr. Hyde character, at one point, actually kills another character played by Barnhart in the same scene.

"We chose to take that up behind screen," Janes said, referring to a black mesh set up at the rear of the black box theater, "with Mark supplying the voice of both people."

Janes encounters a similar problem when one of his characters is killed and the inspector, also played by Janes, comes onto the scene.

A red door is used throughout the play to orient the audience, serving as a device representing the threshold of the mind.

"It works episodically and metaphorically," Wray said.

It is turned to reveal inner and outer, lighter and darker scenes.

The division of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is more black and white in the 1886 novella "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," by Robert Louis Stevenson.

"That's just where psychology was at the time," Wray said. "Like the idea of experimenting with tinctures."

Straying from the book, the play brings a love interest, Elizabeth, to Dr. Jekyll, which "adds a third dimension," Wray asserted. The addition of her character externalizes and amplifies the internal struggle of Jekyll.

And it should be noted that Elizabeth is not the innocent Victorian woman she might have been had she appeared in the book.

"Elizabeth is very much ahead of her times," Hall said. "She's not meek and mild and quiet."

Hall, 26, said this is her first role as a strong adult woman. In the past, she's played "very 1950s, I-need-a-man characters," she said. "Elizabeth knows what she wants. It's refreshing."

While the feminine role is strong, Wray pointed out that Mr. Hyde "is much more sympathetic in the play" than he is portrayed in the book. "But he has many more dimensions. ... We've twisted it even more from the script," he said, smiling, "because it's Halloween."