A good deed never goes unpunished. Henry Jekyll has a plan to cure his comatose, insane father. All he needs to do is separate the evil that lurks within his father’s mind, leaving only the good, and his father will be healed. Of course, the question is: What becomes of the evil? Where does it go? Can one be all good? What about the balance of human nature?
When Dr. Jekyll’s experiment goes horribly wrong, an entire new personality is created and a monster is released on the streets of London. While not exactly true to the original story by Robert Louis Stevenson, Jekyll and Hyde, The Musical is a wonderfully romantic and at times thought provoking script with fantastic songs, especially for all of us mezzos out here!
Friday evening I had the opportunity to see Joliet Drama Guild’s latest production of Jekyll and Hyde, The Musical. Now, I gotta tell you that this musical holds a very dear place in my heart. It was my first musical back on stage after 10 years of not performing. And it was the first musical I did in London, as well. It’s not Sondheim, but I really love this show and have loads of fond memories of doing it. It’s never easy to put aside your own perceptions and memories of a show to see another group perform it, but I was excited to reacquaint myself with Jekyll, Lucy and Emma!
First thing I noticed was the laboratory on stage left. It was a great set up with the lab table, beakers, tubes and colorful lighting. The brick backdrop was a nice addition and felt like a basement lab. I’m not sure I was completely sold on the neon lighting under some of the tubes, I think I would have preferred white lighting through colored water, but overall I thought the effect of the mad scientist’s lab was achieved.
I also quite liked the London street scene backdrop. Though not geographically accurate, it also set the scene well, leaving no doubt of where the story was taking place.
On the actor side of things there were a couple of performances that stood out from the rest. Utterson (Justin Ongenae) was empathetic and charismatic as Jekyll’s best friend and lawyer. He had a fairly strong singing voice and looked the role.
Emma Carew (Shanan D’Agostino) was another bright light of the evening. A beautiful soprano voice, she sang her songs with ease. D’Agostino has a good stage presence and tried make the connections needed with the other actors to make the story believable. Unfortunately, her beautiful operatic voice got in the way of the songs a bit. These songs need a little more belt to them than D’Agostino gave them. This wasn’t an awful thing when she was singing solo, the problem came when she was singing with another actor on stage. Her operatic quality did not blend with the other singers. Her voice stood out amongst the crowd, but not in good way.
For me, the best performance of the evening came from Lucy Harris (Jeannie Rega-Markionni). With strong belt vocals, Rega-Markionni was committed to her character and infused her songs with the emotions needed to convey Lucy’s story. Rega-Markionni made choices in her performance that I didn’t see happening with other people on stage. She stayed in the moment and worked to bring Lucy to life. And I’ve got to give her props for some excellent timing during the song Dangerous Game. JDG used pre-recorded music and as is often the case when this happens, it’s hard for the singers to match the tempo of the recording, especially once the adrenaline of a live performance sets in. Rega-Markionni was fairly consistent through out the show of hitting those tempos, but it was spot on during Dangerous Game and sounded brilliant. Well done.
Michael J. Perkins played the title role of Jekyll/Hyde. Unfortunately I think there may be some problems with the monitor situation on stage because I often felt like he couldn’t hear the music clearly enough. Too often his singing sat just below the pitch. His posture and vocal changes were well developed and distinct in each character, but it was lacking a more visual change. He needed to be wigged and use the same technique the Broadway production did to differentiate the two characters. It would have helped.
There were, unfortunately, a number of directorial problems with this production. Blocking tended to be awkward and unnatural. The scene in which Jekyll is trying to convince the Board of Governors to let him experiment on humans is a prime example. Jekyll stood with his back to half of the audience for almost the entirety of the scene. There are ways to move him about the stage, turning him in different directions, without losing where his focus is. Other times, in a monologue or solo scene, the actors seemed to wander lost across the stage, as though they were told to kill time through this part.
There was also a pretty severe lack of character development throughout the cast. There were many instances where the lines felt as though they were being read and not said with an actual purpose. I go back to what I said last week about letting the character “speak” and “do” because that’s what the character needs, not because it is written in the script that way. Every person on stage needs to develop their own story. I know it sounds like Theater 101, but too often we depend on the lines to tell us what to do when in reality we need to let our characters tell us what to do.
Choreography was another problem within this production. It was pedantic and predictable, using far too many hand movements to act out each individual word. There was a glimmer of hope during Bring On The Men, but not enough space on the stage to realize the full effect. I would also caution against using young junior high aged girls in the bar room scene. I’m not sure that’s a great way to demonstrate what is going on in the Red Rat.
Finally, I want to remind the cast of my standard advice to anyone who finds themselves on stage. I call it Amy’s Rule Of Paranoia and I’ve shared it with you before: Someone is ALWAYS watching you when you are onstage. Regardless of whether you are the center of attention or not, someone in the audience is watching you. You can’t, for one second, let your guard down and think that no one sees you giggle with the person next to you or no one noticed you scratching yourself, fixing your hair, rubbing your nose, etc. Stay in character and stay in the scene. It helps us, the audience, to suspend belief and enjoy the show.
There is no doubt that this has been a production of love for all the cast and crew, and everyone has obviously worked very hard. Unfortunately, it’s just not quite up to the same standard I’ve seen in other musicals around the area. Having said that, this really is one of my favorite shows of all time and it’s worth the trip down to Joliet to hear the music. And to hear Jeannie Rega-Markionni sing Dangerous Game and A New Life, truly a wonderful performance.
Jekyll and Hyde, The Musical is presented by Joliet Drama Guild in downtown Joliet and runs through August 18, 2011. For tickets and information, visit their website here.
