The Man Inside, with music by Tony Rees and book and lyrics by Gary Young, is a reworked, smaller scale version of Jekyll, the musical based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous tale of dual personality that was staged back in 1996 at the Churchill Theatre, Bromley. Jekyll was an all-singing, all-dancing production; this is a shorter, stripped down chamber piece, a three hander which provides more of an overview of the story and lends itself perfectly to the atmospheric intimacy of Clapham’s Landor Theatre.

Under the slick direction of Robert McWhir, the three actors play out an extraordinary chapter in the life of Henry Jekyll, the doctor who, as part of his research into the darker workings of the human mind, decides to start drinking his own concoctions and morphing regularly into Edward Hyde, his demonic alter ego. All three performances are strong and believable throughout with Dave Willetts on commanding form, in terrific voice and handling the transition between his two characters admirably. Particularly skilful is his management of the trickier moments when Hyde becomes increasingly out of control and pervades Jekyll’s civilised (and frankly, quite boring) life with his fiancé, the resolute and staid Katherine (Alexandra Fisher). Lizzie is both feisty whore and tragic love-seeker, representing the Hyde side of the protagonist’s personality, embodying his sinister, lustful desires and baser instincts. Jessie Lilley embraces the role with zest, with one of the show’s punchier numbers giving her the chance to really strut her stuff and shine.

Overall, there is much to commend here. Martin Thomas’s superb yet simple design sets the scene perfectly, tripling up as study, lab and Victorian street and Matheson Bayley’s astounding musical direction and piano accompaniment is surely worth the ticket price alone, wringing every possible bit of emotion from a score that isn’t always as strong as it could be in places.

However the condensing of such a complex, involved and arguably hackneyed work into just 80 sung-through minutes is a challenge and a half, and whilst the company face this passionately head on, something is definitely lost. The piece seems too fleeting, relying heavily on prior knowledge of the original story and its issues to make its impact. What does work beautifully is the ingenious twist at the end, which throws Stevenson’s universal themes, as important and relevant today as they were then, into sharp focus, and puts everything into context.  I’d like to have seen more of this innovative flash in place of some of the sickly and quite unnecessary romantic exchanges that happen between Dr Jekyll and Katherine, for example.

There is no doubt that this is still very much a work in progress, designed to test the water and see where it can go. Whether it has legs remains to be seen, but, for now, it is a bold, true-to-itself take on a much-loved classic which is well worth a look.