Are we not men?

I went to see a play today. It's called "The Island of Dr. Moreau." It was absolutely amazing.
Dr. Moreau is on a deserted island, experimenting on animals. Essentially he's trying to make them like men. The play is very creepy, and that's part of the appeal of it, but I also liked some of the points it brought up.
The beasts ask "Are we not men?" repeatedly but never get an answer. They are obviously capable of intelligent thought and speech to some degree. They try to live according to "the law" and have at least some kind of consciousness. But they say this in voices that are still fairly savage and animal-like. There's a continuous chorus of animal growls and cries ringing in the play-goers' ears throughout the play. So you have to wonder, just how human are they?
As Moreau himself points out his experiments "start off well but nature reclaims them quickly." One way of looking at the play is you can't win against nature. Our instincts are a strong force. "The beast in a man is usually not hard to find. In my experience it's the humanity one has to look for." So how much do we act on instinct, when does it start to take over and how long can we expect our "humanity" to last when pushed to the limit?
And while I didn't mean for this to turn into a deep analysis, the play really gave me some good food for thought. See, this is why I don't really count myself as "normal." Oh well, the play was absolutely incredible and being normal is vastly overrated. Good job to all the people who worked on the show, it turned out great.