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Jekyll and Hyde
By Jana J. Monji
The mystery of Leslie Bricusse (book and lyrics) and Frank Wildhorn's
(music) Jekyll & Hyde is why couldn't the critics kill it? In its third
year on Broadway and now touring the country, the show features mediocre to
awful lyrics and unmemorable music.
Based on the Robert Louis Stevenson novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde and its many Hollywood cinematic perversions, as conceived for
stage by Steve Cuden and Frank Wildhorn, this is no longer a story for
children. The first scene strongly hints at this when you get a clear side
view of naked male buttocks.
Dr. Jekyll is a respectable doctor, searching for a cure for the senility
that imprisons his beloved father and failing to find funding from the
stodgy, but ultimately vindicated, board of directors for St. Jude's
Hospital. Jekyll is engaged to the beautiful and understanding Emma
(Anastasia Barzee). Denied human guinea pigs, Jekyll decides to inject
himself with his serum only to introduce us to Mr. Hyde.
Although part of this story takes us to a brothel where Dr. Jekyll and his
high-class friends are entertained by a chanteuse/prostitute, Lucy (Jodi
Stevens filling in some tasteful lingerie designed by Ann Curtis for Luba
Mason on the night I attended), the working girls are more conservatively
covered here than for Peter Hall's recent version of "Measure for Measure"
at the Ahmanson. There the nudity of Hall's call girls seemed gratuitous in
their shimmering whiteness. Here the feminine coyness is incongruous when
contrasted with the exposed chest of a formidably tall and well-toned lower
class laborer in the dead of a London winter, or the strategically draped
robe over the same virile body and other moments of male exposure.
Stevenson alluded to debauchery, but his Jekyll was a man driven by his own
arrogance and not some noble thought or guilt brought upon by his father's
senility. The novel describes a man of nearly fifty and a confirmed (as only
the English can produce) bachelor. There was no Lucy or Emma--the temptress
and the virtuous virgin, to define his good and bad sides romantically.
The New York Times ventured to theorize about the survival of this musical
dud, falling neatly into a publicist's trap. The one sentence, "It's a
phenomena," was lifted and now cleverly trumpets a false seal of critical
approval on the billboards, taking in the unwary.
But there are others who know full well what the attraction is: a hunky
lead (Robert Evan, currently) who musses up his good-guy, smooth Dr. Jekyll
hair to become the wild, throaty-voiced Mr. Hyde. Evan is a former varsity player at the University of Georgia, besides having sung "This
Is the Moment" for the 1998 Goodwill Games and the 1998 New York Yankees
World Series Celebration at City Hall. Some never get over
their longing for the high school football heroes.
Besides the babe-magnet lead, the teasing semi-nudity and tastefully
displayed full nudity of male bodies is also part of the answer.
Jekyll and Hyde doesn't have the gritty lewdness and casual nudity of
another current Broadway musical,Cabaret(even more so in the Club 54
Broadway version than the more modest touring show). Instead it has the
sweep of romance and the tasteful appreciation of the male form. Evan, who
majored in finance, can surely tell audience members, sex sells.
Jekyll & Hyde, Plymouth Theater, Midtown West, 236 W. 43rd Street, New
York. Tuesdays-Sundays, 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, 8
p.m.$45-$75.(212) 239-6200.
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