MUSICAL THEATRE REVIEW:
JEKYLL & HYDE

JOHN COULBOURN,
Special to TorSun
16 NOV 2012
R: 3/5

Pictured:
Constantine Maroulis

TORONTO - Judging from his Broadway-bound production of JEKYLL & HYDE: THE MUSICAL, it’s a good thing director/choreographer Jeff Calhoun chose a career in theatre and not the amusement park. Had he chosen to make rollercoasters instead of stage musicals, one suspects, his rides would begin at the very peak of the steepest drop and simply not go anywhere from there. Which is pretty much precisely what his production of the freewheeling, bodice-ripping Leslie Bricusse/Frank Wildhorn “adaptation” of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel seems to do in its limited but tightly-wound engagement at the Ed Mirvish Theatre, where it opened Wednesday.

That would, of course, be the same adaptation that Robin Phillips directed on Broadway back in the mid-’90s — a production that, while it ran for years, failed nonetheless to make it into the fiscal black. But while it can never be counted a financial triumph, the Phillips’ production, if happy memory serves, tried mightily to and often succeeded in exploring both the emotional light and darkness of the tale as spun out in Bricusse’s hyper-gothic book. In the process, Phillips also provided a dramatically textured voyage into the heart of the story that did much to minimize the shortcomings of Wildhorn’s overly anthemic music and Bricusse’s elementary rhyming schemes, which hit the very apogee of good taste in the pairing of “upper class” with “his ass”.

Instead of minimizing the faults of the book and music, however, Calhoun’s production embraces them, turning pretty much the entire song-list into a score sung in the key of overwrought, with American Idol’s Constantine Maroulis struggling to find dramatic depth in the dual roles of the good doctor and his villainous alter-ego, but finding only (Johnny) Depp-lite instead.

Deborah Cox, meanwhile plays the tragically fallen Lucy Harris, her character’s tragedy lessened in no small way by the fact that Cox seems to think she’s starring in a steamy music video. Meanwhile, as Emma Carew, virtuous foil to Cox’s Bring-On-The-Men Lucy, Teal Wicks opts for more stainless ’n’ steel than sugar ’n’ spice, although she still manages to offer up the most tender moments in the show in a surprisingly under-stated Once Upon a Dream.

But, in the end, it falls to Richard White, cast as Emma’s loving father, and Cox’s fellow Canuck, Laird Mackintosh, cast as Jekyll’s friend, John Utterson, to periodically coax the production off the clenched-hair cliff on which it is so often perched, affording in the process, moments of genuine true human emotion — but only moments.

And while Tobin Ost’s sets and costume designs are suitably goth, if not always strictly Gothic, they do in fact sit well with Calhoun’s high-test vision, as does Jeff Croiter’s lighting — but sadly, rampant over-amplification in Ken Travis’ sound design leaves Maroulis’ Mr. Hyde panting like an over-eager Pekingese in too many of his scenes. If you’re looking for dramatic texture, all this production offers is a game of Hyde and seek.