Jekyll & Hyde the Musical

Years and years ago, in college, my parents took us to see Jekyll and Hyde, the musical, in Boston at the beautiful Wang Theatre. Recently, I saw that this was going to be playing here in SF, and I remembered how much I loved the music, so I decided to see it. I have trouble watching plays and movies, since I have a hard time sitting there in those seats and I tend to doze. Dozing off is a waste of money in a movie, but its also rude to the actors in a live play. I decided I'd do it anyway. Friday, after a nice dinner, A and I went to the ft. mason center to see the play, put on by the Royal Underground Theatre Company. It was his first time seeing that one. I usually either really like or really dislike musicals. A good musical song will have the same sort of feeling and texture to it that a good club song has, which is why before I realized there was such thing as house music, I listened to musicals. This was a smallish theatre, so you didn’t get the extreme acoustics you would get in a large theatre like Wang. We sat right near the front, in the 3rd or 4th row, so got a great view of everything. The first part of the play was longer than I'd remembered…it took FOREVER to get to the good part, where Dr. Jekyll becomes Mr. Hyde. That happened a little before intermission, and from that point out, it was good. The second act flew by. The best actors were Jekyll/Hyde and the prostitute, Lucy. The other people did a pretty good job, but I could hear points where they went a little off-key, causing me to wince, the way a dj's bad transition does. Some of the actors didn’t seem to quite fit their character, either. Lucy did a great job, good singing, good acting, and she fit. Jekyll had such a strange face…it lent itself so well to transformation, you could see him becoming Hyde, without any additional props/costumes or anything. He sang well, but was a bit drowned out by the instruments…they had the actors doubling as the band onstage, which caused some sound problems. My favorite song of the whole play was when he was switching from Jekyll to Hyde and back and forth, a very powerful song which could have been a bit louder. Another thing I didn't like, music-wise, was the inclusion of drums into the orchestra…it was even written in the program that they added that because they play the drum, but it ended up giving some of the songs a bad soft-rock edge to them which is not how they were originally written. Overall, I think that everyone did a great job, especially for the price. I love the theme of the play, that everyone has two sides and we can't deny the darker part. The songs written for this musical are very powerful… It did bring to mind, though, a drug addict and his family trying to do an intervention. Lol. We went on the second to last night, so you can't watch this exact one, but should it ever come to your neck of the woods, go check it out! (photo courtesy of http://www.7x7.com/royal-underground-theatre-company)