Houston Review

Copyright 2000 Houston Chronicle

There's a flip side to the excitement of having a new show play Houston before going to Broadway: When the post-Broadway tour comes through, it's a case of "been there, done that."

That's especially true of Jekyll & Hyde, which premiered here in 1990 and had two return engagements on the long road to its 1997 Broadway opening. The New York production celebrates its third anniversary this month, and J&H returns for a fourth Houston stand in the Broadway version's national tour.

With its superficial, bombastic treatment of Robert Louis Stevenson's story, J&H does not hold up to repeated exposure. It's basically the same show as ever, with the same glaring weaknesses and occasional strengths.

Leslie Bricusse's libretto offers a broad, obvious treatment of the familiar tale. The pompous B-movie dialogue, cardboard characters (especially Jekyll's adversaries, depicted as sneering nasties) and heavy-handed attempts at humor add up to a Gothic comic book.

Frank Wildhorn's score casts it all in hyperventilating, pop-opera mode, heavily indebted to Andrew Lloyd Webber and the Les Misérables team of Boublil and Schonberg. Hearing the music again, one realizes how much is drab filler, as in the repetitious ensemble numbers and droning recitatives of Jekyll arguing with colleagues or detailing his experiment.

Wildhorn's strong gift for melody asserts itself in a handful of big power ballads, the best being prostitute-heroine Lucy's Someone Like You, A New Life and her cabaret-style routine Bring on the Men.

Yet even most of the good numbers are so generic that they could be sung by almost any character in any show. This Is the Moment, Jekyll's bravura show stopper, sounds more like the boffo vocal turn in a Vegas nightclub act than the expression of a scientist embarking on an experiment.

Bricusse, perhaps the most uneven lyricist in theater history, can sometimes do capable, neatly turned work (as in A New Life, his best here), yet many of his lyrics are so clumsy, predictable and just plain awful they make one wince: "All of the dreaming/scheming and screaming/become one." In this heavily amplified production, the lyrics can be unintelligible, especially in ensemble numbers -- which, at times, could be a blessing.

David Warren has supplied competent but pedestrian direction, mostly based on Robin Phillips' Broadway staging, with flashes of Gregory Boyd's original. Like the writing, the direction's use of violence and manipulation of crowds of haves and have-nots mostly recycles stronger shows such as Sweeney Todd and Les Miz.

Chuck Wagner, back in the title role that he originated in 1990, once again proves a strapping, booming-voiced, matinee idol-type who hams it up to the hilt of his good-and-evil duality. As Jekyll, he's questing and tormented; as Hyde, he's a frothing-at-the-mouth beast. Through it all, he sings with leather-lunged vigor, even while writhing on the floor during his tortuous transformations.

Becca Ayers was Lucy at Tuesday's opening night and she was very good in the show's most potent role. Lucy has all the most affecting material, since a prostitute seeking love and a better life adapts to musicalization much more readily than a scientist conducting an experiment. Ayers, both saucy and vulnerable, makes the most of her chances, singing her ballads with full-throated power and feeling.

Kelli O'Hara brings restraint and dignity to Emma, Jekyll's good-girl fiancee. She has a fine soprano, heard to good effect in her early duet with Jekyll, Take Me as I Am, and her neatly balanced duet with Lucy, In His Eyes. Thanks also to O'Hara for remaining quiet throughout her pretty (albeit ultra-generic) Once Upon a Dream. It was nice to hear one ballad that didn't clamor for blockbuster status.

The featured players cope professionally with thin, one-note roles: Jamie Ross as Emma's concerned father, James Clow as Jekyll's supportive friend, Abe Reybold as Jekyll's sleekly snide nemesis Simon Stride.

Ann Curtis' costumes re-create the period handsomely, from finery to rags. James Noone's scenic design is a serviceable frame with two moveable metal staircases, backed by changing drops depicting lithographs of 19th-century London scenes.

From the very beginning, this show's ace apparently has been the simple fact that lots of people want to see a musicalized Jekyll & Hyde, with its handful of familiar hits. For fans of the concept, this is the moment -- again.

Jekyll & Hyde

When: 8 p.m. today-Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday

Where: Jones Hall

Tickets: $30.50-$55; 713-629-3700