In October 1977, a man whose birth certificate read William Stanley Milligan was arrested for the rape of three women on the Ohio State campus.  Milligan claimed insanity; his psychologists claimed he suffered from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), then called "split personality."  The rapes were allegedly committed against Milligan's will by "Adalana," a lesbian alter.  There were 24 personalities in all, including a dyslexic 3-year-old girl, an Australian hunter, a landscape painter, an English hematologist, a tenor sax-playing escape artist, a Jewish thief (the others were atheists), a deaf 4-year-old, a communist Slav fluent in Serbo-Croat and a right-handed con man (the others were southpaws). Daniel Keyes, the author of Flowers for Algernon, immortalized Milligan and his alters in two books, beginning with The Minds of Billy Milligan in 1981.

When Robert Louis Stevenson wrote his 1886 novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde on a three-day coke binge, he was inspired by Deacon William Brodie, a respected cabinetmaker who moonlighted as a cat burglar.  Stevenson questioned the Victorian notion that once-perfect human morality was tainted by an outside influence called sin.  When Jekyll drinks his potion and becomes Hyde, Hyde is indeed cruel, but Jekyll is far from virtuous.  It's heady stuff from what is often reduced to a quaint monster story.  At the end of the novella, Jekyll realizes he's about to be supplanted by his animal nature.  We're intrigued by these stories, whether fiction or not, because we sometimes sense there might be a plethora of personalities, or at least possibilities, living behind our eyes.

In Jeffrey Hatcher's 2008 adaptation Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Hyde is represented by four actors, one of them female, but Jekyll's a different actor altogether.  It's a challenging idea, which Harlequin Production's director Scot Whitney does a fine job of communicating quickly.  Of Harlequin's four Hydes, I found Mike Dooly's the most memorably swaggering.  I was thrown by Caitlin Frances's upbeat charmer, but it's worth pointing out that unlike the monster in most cinematic adaptations, Stevenson's Hyde was actually smaller than Jekyll.  Frank Lawler earns a beatdown as Carew (a snarling douche in Hatcher's version), and Russ Holm is effortlessly charming as Utterson, though his vocalization for Hyde isn't sufficiently distinct.  As for Jekyll, Aaron Lamb's accent is ohf'lly plummeh, and his writhing contortions dip into Hammer-style Grand Guignol. (That's "Hammer," not "hammy.")  More often than not, he suggests a Victorian Palpatine, including skyward cries of "Nooo!"

If I seem disappointed by Harlequin's Jekyll & Hyde, it's largely because the look of the show does nothing to juice Hatcher's overlong, un-engaging first act.  Scenic designer Jill Carter and costume designer Kathleen Anderson give us 80 minutes of almost uninterrupted gray-on-black, though things do pick up considerably with the arrival of a radiant lab piece.  Production stage manager Kate Arvin's gels and gobos brighten the taut second act.  Harlequin's staging is as polished as ever - the trick door alone should get its own curtain call - but Victorian drabness only heightens the snooze factor.

What works best is Hatcher's investigation into the duality (and, more often than not, hypocrisy) of human behavior.  Christianity promises our imperfections can be washed away like some superficial stain.  It scares us to imagine they might, rather, be part of us, intrinsic and inseparable as any of our virtues or memories.  We contain multitudes, and the monster inside us may be lurking down the next fog-bound alley.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Through Sept. 18, 8 p.m. Thursday - Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, $24-$32
Harlequin Productions, 204 Fourth Ave. E., Olympia
360.786.0151