first night review: jekyll and hyde @ JPAc

Jekyll & Hyde @ JPAC
review by Todd Perley

Halloween is a good time to wear a mask and pretend to be something horrifying. If you need instruction, 'Jekyll & Hyde' is here to help.

The musical veers from Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 allegorical novella, adhering more to the first stage production from 1887, which most notably added a love interest—or interests, since both Jekyll and Hyde get girlfriends—aw, how sweet! The novella, play, and musical all explore the dichotomy of good v. evil in all of us and the battle between ego and id, but with murder and mayhem to zhuzh things up a notch. This seemed to be the Victorian zeitgeist of the moment, since a year after Stevenson gave us the good doctor and nasty ole’ Hyde, Oscar Wilde gave us Dorian Gray. So many naughty Victorian boys!

I prefer my musicals dark and eerie. 'Jekyll & Hyde' came out in 1990, eleven years after 'Sweeny Todd', and the two make lovely, macabre bookends. I’m fine with adding music to an eldritch tale if said music is sufficiently moody, frenetic, and sinister, which this certainly is. The songs complement the skeletal set and dreary lighting. It’s a fair guess that Danny Elfman saw 'Jekyll & Hyde' and was inspired by the songs for his 1993 scoring of 'Nightmare Before Christmas'. Both productions use music as paint for the spooky atmosphere effectively, and both are composed to perfection from the same color palate.

This is a juggernaut of a production, with the principle cast and ensemble numbering twenty-nine, plus a twenty-seat orchestra, resulting in a continuous wave of aural and visual inundation. Tough to keep this hectic pace going for nearly three hours, but they succeed.

Tyler Walls plays the eponymous hero/villain with empathy, and his pipes are frankly amazing. Ever try to sing a duet with yourself? Mr. Walls pulls it off. Monique Abry Knoepfler and Stephanie Abry (real life sisters-in-law) bring softness to the stage as Jekyll and Hyde’s respective boos, tempering the dark themes with humanity. And again with the pipes! The ensemble pieces, backed by the gorgeous orchestra, are hair-raising—a wall of exquisite sound, like hell’s own choir.

Ken Goode’s direction keeps the plot and character arcs sailing smoothly along. He has this to say: “The show is darker and more violent than most of the rest of the musical theatre canon,” (I’m here for it!), “but it is a lush melodrama at its core and its indulgent score and story keep it extremely relevant to current societal issues and conversations.” Societally relevant indeed. If you also find jolly catharsis in the violent dispatching of self-righteous hypocrites, this one’s for you.

Jekyll & Hyde plays through 3 November at Jefferson Performing Arts Center
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