Jekyll and Hyde by Frank Wildhorn

Jekyll and Hyde Reviews

• 
  Bruce

  Quick! How many science fiction-themed musicals can you name? ("The Wizard of Oz" and "Wicked" don't count.) I know, I know! Space Port! What do you mean you've never heard of Space Port, philistine?! (Admittedly that's an unproduced pastiche show I wrote about an erstwhile shuttle jockey with astraphobia.) So let's see, there's Little Shop of Horrors, Rocky Horror [Picture Show], Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds (sort of, inasmuch as this is more of a concert piece than traditional music theater), the utterly wretched Superman the Musical, and… and… and… um… well, on the jukebox front, I suppose there's Return to the Forbidden Planet and the rarissima adaptation of Earth Girls are Easy. And.... that's about it.
  
  Why do I know all this? Because following the Museum of Science Fiction's inaugural Escape Velocity event, I was tasked with trying to find a show that we might co-produce at a subsequent con. We just showcased Rocky Horror, and it's probably Forbidden Planet we want, but as I have a cousin who works for Music Theater International, I thought I'd see what else is around. Turns out there's (not) much more in the offing. (Starmites or Bat Boy anyone?) She let me preview three MTI-controlled shows: Jekyll and Hyde, The Toxic Avenger, and Urinetown. Having now read each one and listened to their respective scores, I thought I might review them all at the same time. Each illuminates a different aspect of theatrical construction.
  
  Jekyll and Hyde is an example of straightforward craft. It's a workmanlike vehicle in the family of melodramatic, semi-operatic spectaculars epitomized by Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, and Sweeney Todd, it just doesn't rise to their levels of quality, rather falling on the spectrum somewhere around Ca Ira.

  JEKYLL: John. You remember my father… before… his mind and spirit were… extremely strong, weren't they?
  
  UTTERSON (moved): He was the finest man I ever knew.
  
  JEKYLL (to himself): I must do it… for his sake. [Act I, Scene 6]

  Musical theater doesn't have much stage time to devote to character motivation. Given how long it takes to sing a single sentence, nuance is most often left to be conveyed by acting and underscoring. Even so, I expect more from a musical than an orphan, overt line reading. Worse, multiple numbers here devoted to shall-I-shan't-I handwringing get in the way of opportunities for good, chew-the-scenery romping, the latter compressed into a single montage number.
  
  Whose fault was this? Leslie Bricusse, whose best work was written alongside Anthony Newley in the early 1970s, appears to have done a solid job adapting book and lyrics from
  Robert Louis Stevenson. Alas, his partner here was Frank Wildhorn. Remember The Civil War? The Scarlet Pimpernel? Bonnie and Clyde? What about Dracula the Musical? (And no, I am not making that last one up.) Wildhorn, who seems to specialize in schmaltzy ditties with unsurprising melodic patterns, can do nothing to buttress the weaknesses of the book. Jekyll may have been his lone theatrical success, though, thanks in no small part to the one or two numbers like
  Someone Like You. What more can I say? It's a serviceable, if silly, show featuring the titular man/monster in a backstory- and character-development-free love triangle with a fiancee and a hooker with a heart of gold. In the right production, it might even make it as high camp, but the show probably takes itself too seriously for that to work out with the effectiveness of a Miss Saigon.
  
  By contrast, consider The Toxic Avenger, a show with no aspirations or pretensions even to mediocrity. Based on the eponymous B-Movie, this trashy trainwreck of a show succeeds or fails on the strength of the conviction that over-the-top performances, sets, and makeup can spin up lazy writing into the appearance of an effective postmodern satire. This may require a self-aware audience to dupe itself into mistaking adolescent shock-schlock for irreverence, but never you mind. We will boldly go where others wisely do not bother to tread.

  MA: You stay away from my Melvin! For the first time he's successful and he's in love, even if it is with a blind librarian.
  
  MAYOR: Blind librarian? Aha! So he's been hiding out with her!
  
  MA: Me and my big mouth! …
  
  MAYOR: I will find him, I will destroy him, and until I do, Tromaville is under Marshall Law! [sic]
  
  MA: Marshall law! You're a fascist!
  
  MAYOR: Well, you know what YOU ARE…
  
  MAYOR/MA (alternately): You're a bitch! You're a slut! You're a liar! You're a whore! [Act 1, Scene 12]

  This act closer is actually one of the wittier dialogues/songs. Theatergoers flocking to a show like Toxic Avenger are probably not looking for subtlety, and the best face I can put on this is to suggest the work aims for dadaism, more
  Ubu Roi-style slapstick than farce. It's a low bar easily and immediately hurdled from the energy derived in concentrating a cast of thousands into a quick-change quintet. This is a production-dependent phenomenon, and note that I've said little about the
  music or plot yet. Suffice it to say that even a pure Bon Jovi jukebox approach would have produced a stronger score, and as for the latter, well, if the broad outline of the book tracks that of Jekyll and Hyde, at least the story provides its cardboard characters something of an arc. Still, Toxic Avenger stands in stark contrast to and really helps one appreciate a show with equal irreverence and legitimate satirical bite, namely...
  
  Urinetown: The Musical - Let me leave the plot synopsis to the author:

  LITTLE SALLY: Say, Officer Lockstock, is this where you tell the audience about the water shortage?
  
  LOCKSTOCK: What's that, Little Sally?
  
  LITTLE SALLY: You know, the water shortage. The hard times. The drought. A shortage so awful that private toilets eventually become unthinkable. A premise so absurd that --
  
  LOCKSTOCK: Whoa there, Little Sally. Not all at once. They'll hear more about the water shortage in the next scene.
  
  LITTLE SALLY: Oh, I guess you don't want to overload them with too much exposition, huh?
  
  LOCKSTOCK: Everything in its time, Little Sally. You're too young to understand it now, but nothing can kill a show like too much exposition.
  
  LITTLE SALLY: How about bad subject matter?
  
  LOCKSTOCK: Well --
  
  LITTLE SALLY: Or a bad title, even? That could kill a show pretty good.
  
  LOCKSTOCK: Well, Little Sally, suffice it to say that in Urinetown (the musical) everyone has to use public bathrooms in order to take care of their private business. That's the central conceit of the showww! [sic, Act I, Scene 1, page 2]

  What's weird about Urinetown is less its central conceit than its hyper-self-conscious approach. It seems less a genuine social satire, than a parody of a
  Berthold Brecht/
  Clifford Odets polemic, given that it uses direct address to the audience not to emphasize its subject matter, but rather to call attention to, criticize, and apologize for its class warfare theme and the stridency of its choral anthems. All the characters are farcical gee-whiz naifs or unteachable true believers, whose respective venality effects the same consequences, is equally sent up for ridicule, and which ultimately leads to a conclusion that does more to undermine all the precedent action than to cap it off. Urinetown's cynical messaging suggests that human frailty and stupidity render mutual consideration irrelevant, a futile exercise. Regardless of intent, poor execution and pervasive myopia doom all to destruction. Perhaps this is a commentary on incompetence, or maybe just another way of flipping the script on leftist playwrights. Whatever the show purports to "say" -- something surely dictated by performance -- the book (and score) remain strong enough to command attention and convey some sort of meaning. Every bit as flippant as Jekyll and Hyde is overearnest, Urinetown is a more solid entertainment.