Liz Nicholls, Journal Theatre Writer
The Edmonton Journal
Theatre Preview
Jekyll and Hyde
Produced by: American Touring Production
Director: David Warren
Starring: Chuck Wagner, Sharon Brown, Kelli O'Hara
Stage: Jubilee Auditorium
Dates: Through Feb. 13
Tickets: TicketMaster, 451-8000
What would Robert Louis Stevenson have made of the strange case of The Strange
Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde?
The signature 1886 novella about the good doctor who unleashes the horror of
evil from within has had multiple incarnations on stage and screen. No surprise
there: two, two, two big juicy starring roles in one, as actors like John Barrymore,
Frederich March and Spencer Tracy didn't fail to notice.
Twenty years ago Jekyll And Hyde started to transmute into a pop musical. Frank
Wildhorn, an ambitious young songwriter at the University of Southern California
found his star in classmate Chuck Wagner. And by the time Jekyll And Hyde opened
at the Alley Theatre in Houston in 1990, equipped with lyrics by Leslie Bricusse
of Doctor Doolittle and Victor/Victoria fame -- he also wrote What Kind Of Fool
Am I?, but that's another story -- the musical had hatched its own monster cult
following. And the strange case of Jekyll And Hyde got stranger. The repeat
defenders dubbed themselves Jekkies, and they just couldn't stop seeing the
show, over and over.
Jekkies were a major feature of various pre-Broadway tours of the show, too.
The much-reworked Broadway production directed and designed by Robin Phillips,
late of the Citadel, is finishing its third year of sold-out houses, standing
Os, and queues of Jekkies clamouring for tickets -- some of whom have seen the
show 150 or more times. Popularity undimmed by bad reviews -- a strange case
indeed on Broadway. It seems clear that in the singing doctor and his singing
evil alter-ego New York has its first critic-proof hit musical.
The touring production, revised again for the road, that arrives at the Jube
Wednesday night for eight performances brings Wildhorn's USC buddy back into
the lead role(s) he originated in Houston 10 years ago and hasn't played since.
It's been a decade in which the affable Wagner moved his family to New York
and instantly became "a Broadway veteran," as he puts it with a smile and nary
a trace of his native Tennessee in his voice. And he has the credits to prove
it: Inspector Javert in Le Miz, the Beast in Beauty and the Beast (including
two years in the Canadian premiere production in Toronto), Cinderella's Prince
and the Wolf in the original cast of Into The Woods, Athos in The Three Musketeers.
"I'm a more mature Jekyll," says Wagner over dinner last week on a stop-over
between the run in Austin and opening night in Salt Lake City. Maybe that's
a good thing because it's a tougher gig now, thanks to Phillips.
Wagner explains that when he last played Dr. J and Mr. H. in Houston, with the
luscious-voiced Linda Eder (Mrs. Wildhorn in real life) as the prostitute Lucy,
the transformation scene was accomplished with a mirror, projections, and a
second voice.
Now the actor is on his own for Confrontation, the duet with himself in which
Hyde battles the tormented Jekyll for his soul.
Phillips' "simplified" staging is an actor's challenge, involving flipping his
hair into a different configuration, and alterations of vocal quality and posture.
"When I saw that 'hair ballet' on opening night in New York I couldn't believe
it!" says Wagner.
"I thought, you know, 'you can't be serious!' And then, Wow. Once you see how
committed the actor is, like any good theatre, you suspend disbelief.É That's
why I love live theatre."
That's what took a Tennessee country lad to summer stock in Kentucky his first
summer out of high school, and big musicals like 1776 and Show Boat. Wagner
grins. "It was a great outdoor amphitheatre that seats 2,000 É so rural that
you hear 'so what movie are y'all doin' tomorrah?' "
He studied theatre at the University of Alabama, where one of his shows got
to the American Collegiate Theatre finals.
"We played the Kennedy Center, and I was hooked." And then he transferred to
USC, where "my life was inconvenienced a bit by my studies," he laughs. "Really,
I haven't stopped working since high school. As my prof in Alabama said, 'the
sun always shines on Chuck Wagner.' "
Even when he's living in Toronto. Wagner loved his two years in a house in the
Beaches district, and so did his wife, who took the opportunity to go to York
University. "It was an interesting time to be in Canada," he figures. "The toonie
came out; it was a near thing with civil war (the squeaker referendum)." And
[though they loved their classes] there was, he felt, "a slight tinge of anti-Americanism"
in the kids' school curriculum.
The current tour helps foot the bill for renovations to the vintage Wagner house
in Verona, New Jersey, 30 minutes from Broadway, where the man would love to
end up when it's over, if not in Jekyll, in another Wildhorn musical from their
shared past. Svengali "has some of Frank's best pieces," thinks Wagner, who
sang the title role in the original staging with Eder as Trilby. In fact, he
always suspected Svengali would arrive on Broadway before Jekyll and Hyde. He
grins, "I hoped Linda and I would be the Lunt and Fontane of our generation."
Wildhorn, incidentally, is the first composer in a generation to have three
shows running simultaneously on the Great White Way -- Jekyll, The Scarlet Pimpernel,
The Civil War. And there's more Wildhorn content to come: he's preparing a new
musical, Havana, set in pre-Castro Cuba, for a possible spring opening.
The big time for his Harlem buddy doesn't surprise Wagner, who was in Wildhorn's
very first musical, Christopher, "about the second coming of a Christ-like figure,
an homage to J.C. Superstar."
The touring Jekyll slightly alters the musical content of the Phillips production
running at the Plymouth. We get to hear Jekyll's song I Need To Know ( "I need
to know the nature of the demons that possess man's soul"), for example, and
Lost in the Darkness, about Jekyll's need to understand his father's madness.
Good And Evil is out, in favour of Bring On The Men.
And it's "a little funnier, a little sexier than on Broadway," says Wagner.
"Robin gave it such a sense of class and polish. But it was very dark.
I try to make my Hyde gleefully evil, delightfully evil.
"We want to keep the audience adrenalized."
TWO-FACED TIDBITS:
- Starting with the 1920 Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, starring John Barrymore, the
screen has long been enamoured of Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novella. Other
memorable film versions were made in 1932 (starring Frederich March), 1941 (starring
Spencer Tracy), 1958 (Grip of the Strangler, starring Boris Karloff), 1960 (The
Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll starring Paul Massie), 1968 (starring Jack Palance),
1970 (I, Monster, starring Christopher Lee).
- Best re-name: Dr. Hekyll & Mr. Hype, a 1980 Charles B. Griffith film starring
Oliver Reed, tied with Andy Milligan's 1972 film Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Blood starring
Dennis de Marne.
- As recently as 1995 Eddie Murphy played the scenario for comedy in Nutty Professor.
Other comic takes include a memorable episode of Tweety and Sylvester in which
the adorable bird temporarily becomes a monster.
- For the Edmonton run of Jekyll & Hyde producers have added a 2 p.m. Thursday
matinee, with half-price seats for seniors and students. Chuck sings both shows
that day. No wonder he has endurance: he's actually an action figure, from his
days as an electromagnetic hologram superhero in Automan.