Category: Review

Quick recap: Jekyll has transformed into Hyde and we’re now moving onto the next time Lucy and Jekyll meet. Another remind is that in ’13, we see Hyde give Lucy the wound that she’ll go to Jekyll for later, which is my favorite example of tell-over-show because it completely ruins the later shock of her wound, and I’ll be talking about the importance of that shock value now.

So, the next time we see Lucy, she comes to Jekyll to follow up on his offer of friendship because she’s received a nasty wound from one of her customers. The scenes between ’95 and ‘97 are similar, but cutting the meeting between Hyde and Lucy changes the impact of the realization that the customer was Hyde. In ’97 it’s more of a shock because it’s less clear that Hyde’s been seeing Lucy. It’s also just less clear what Hyde’s doing overall, and I do like that Jekyll in ’97 has to, with the audience, very quickly and in front of Lucy process the real horrors he as Hyde has committed, since it’s implied that he doesn’t really remember what Hyde does. He has to do the same thing in ’95 – I can see his face in the ’95 recording unlike the ’97 recording and he does absolutely panic for a second – but because the audience has a better sense of what Hyde’s been doing, it comes as less of a shock.

There are also some other small changes. There’s an additional line in ‘95. Lucy says “He enjoyed himself doing it too,” which hits pretty hard when you know who it was. (This line is back in ’13 and seems to be more in-line with the kink aspect of Lucy and Hyde’s relationship that they’ve added for some reason.) In ’95 when Lucy says it was Hyde, Jekyll honestly sounds like he’s about to cry in his response. In ’97, the reveal is dragged out more and Jekyll moves around more purposefully, if also more frantically and simply more than in ‘95. When he hears Hyde’s name, again his face is really hard to see, but his response is more measured, like he’s trying to help instead of being wildly guilty. He’s guiltier later when he starts to tend to her wound and she gasps, and he responds, “I’m so sorry,” pauses and again, “I’m so sorry,” clearly losing his composure. I think that the two different response work for the set-up they have, which is to say that ’97 draws things out and builds more because we don’t know as much about what Hyde’s doing and ’95 hits it harder and sooner because we know that Hyde’s been seeing her.

The biggest difference, though, I think is when Lucy kisses Jekyll. She initiates it in both, but the way she does it is very different. In ‘95, she moves slowly, pulling him down onto his knees first, putting him a fairly stable position in front of her before she kisses him, so that even at the beginning he seems to be pretty on board with it. In ‘97, she takes his hand while he’s standing behind her and then pulls him down, unbalancing him, when he tries to jerk away. The kiss is prolonged and afterwards Jekyll startles away in both, although he remains close in ‘95 instead of rushing across the room as he does in ’97. Overall he’s much more startled and reluctant in ‘97, another example of scrubbing away some of his more questionable qualities in the later version. I like the kiss better in ’97 because it destabilizes him, and I’m generally in favor of moments that throw characters off-balance.

In terms of Lucy herself, she comes in more boldly in ‘97 but is ultimately more skittish in both her hand movements and delivery. She’s a lot more straightforward in ‘95 with less pauses, partially because in ‘97 she’s building up to the reveal about Hyde and so has to put in more hesitation. Either way her real characterization in the scene comes when she sings “Sympathy, Tenderness” and then “Someone like You,” and her performance is fairly similar between the two. The emphasis is on her falling in love with Jekyll’s kindness. ‘97 Lucy is sarcastic and worldly, but she’s also optimistic in a way that makes her feel naïve, and therefore more likely to fall for Jekyll so quickly after only a little kindness. I still feel like ‘95 Lucy feels like she ought to know better, but if you read it as she does know better, it makes her story a lot more tragic because it shows a desperation and a recognition of how dire her situation is getting that she starts clinging to this one chance to get out.

After this encounter, Hyde goes on a rampage, killing the Board of Governors, singing “Alive” for the third/second time. Jekyll’s friends becoming increasingly concerned and Lucy shares a duet with Emma (Jekyll’s fiancé, oh right she’s in this show too) about Jekyll.

Hyde then returns to Lucy at the Red Rat, although in ’95 there’s an added scene before he gets there where the performers sing “Girls of the Night” and Lucy sings “No One Knows Who I Am.” Moving “No One Knows Who I Am” here positions it much less as a song of identity and more as a Dark Night of the Soul moment. She’s gotten some help from Jekyll, but she’s mostly in increasing danger from Hyde. No one, including Jekyll, is coming to help her and opening up to Jekyll has made it increasingly obvious to Lucy that she’s in a bad situation that’s making her miserable.

This leads to one of my favorite lines in the show. It is in both, but ’95 emphasizes it better. In ’95, at the end of Lucy’s song, when she says that no one knows who she is, from the darkness, Jekyll – and it is distinctly Jekyll’s voice – says, “I know who you are, my dear,” and Lucy moves instinctively toward him. It is, however, not Jekyll, but Hyde. Lucy says, “I thought it was someone else,” to which Hyde responds, “For a moment, it almost was.” Jekyll’s initial line is a little corny, but we need to hear that Jekyll really was almost there. I know we need Jekyll’s line because it’s not there in ’97 and I completely missed the exchange the first time I watched it. So what happens in ’97 is that someone tells Lucy a friend is there to see her, and again she responds instinctively, but she’s working off the assumption that it’s Jekyll rather him actually being present. Lucy and Hyde then exchange the same lines in ’97 as they do in ’95 (“I thought it was someone else,” “For a moment, it almost was”), but without Jekyll’s lead-in it’s easy to miss not only the lines themselves, but the implication.

I love this moment, especially in ’95, for three reasons. First, it emphasizes that Jekyll is losing control of Hyde. The shows vary pretty wildly on how much they emphasize this point, and I would say ’95 does it the most, and ’97 perhaps the least. But generally it’s expressed in reflective solos from Jekyll, and I like that we get to see it actually happening within the plot. Second, this line is so tragic. It’s at this point that Jekyll realizes Lucy is in danger, and although he sends her a warning, Lucy is burned that he didn’t come himself, so she stays and Hyde kills her shortly thereafter. This implies that, if Jekyll had managed to keep control right now, he could have saved her. So in retrospect, this line hurts a lot. Third, as I’ve said, every time Hyde taunts people it hits really hard and I love it.

Hyde and Lucy then sing “Dangerous Game,” which is a song I love and a song that works thematically, and a song that makes less and less sense the more I think about it. The point of “Dangerous Game” is that Lucy and Hyde’s relationship is tempting and seductive, but also violent and dangerous. This makes sense for Hyde because Hyde’s freedom and aliveness is seductive, but also violent. It also makes sense that Hyde would think of their relationship like this. But it makes less sense that Lucy is currently feeling tempted because in all of their scenes together, she is only ever afraid of him. This is less obvious in ‘97 because this is actually their first scene together, and you could assume she’d been attracted to him at some point if you wanted, but her earlier scene with Jekyll and her later terror of Hyde don’t really bear that out, nor does her generally more skittish personality. We might assume her more jaded personality in ‘95 could lead to more attraction, maybe, but it ultimately makes even less sense because she straight up ran away from him during their first meeting. So I like the song, it just doesn’t really make sense in any version.

The main difference in the scene between ’95 and ‘97 is the staging, plus the small difference that at the end ’95 Lucy gives into the temptation and ’97 Lucy does not. In ‘97 the scene is very tight, all of it taking place with their bodies very close and at the front of the stage as a physical confrontation characterized by small and violent movements. In ‘95 it’s more dynamic. It starts close, and then several times Lucy moves away and Hyde follows. Toward the end it becomes a chase until Hyde catches Lucy. This allows ‘95 to escalate more as Hyde starts throwing chairs and chasing Lucy, but I think the heightened tension of the whole scene in ’97 works better because Lucy’s situation isn’t getting worse, it’s already really bad, and ’97 manages to keep the tension the whole time without it becoming exhausting.

Lucy’s final scene has, in my opinion, the absolutely wildest difference between the two shows, which comes at the very end of the scene. They start the same, but end very differently. In both, Utterson shows up with a letter telling Lucy to leave town and Lucy is upset that Jekyll didn’t show up himself. I’m not really clear on why she doesn’t leave, but there is some implication that she’s either waiting for Jekyll or would have left if he’d shown up. (Or maybe she’s just waiting until morning? I don’t know.) Lucy sings “A New Life” and then Hyde shows up. One small change is that in ’95, before Utterson left Jekyll, Jekyll clearly starts to turn into Hyde, which I do like because, again, it’s clearer that Jekyll is losing control and it creates a ticking time bomb because we know Hyde can’t be too far behind Utterson.

In the confrontation between Hyde and Lucy, the main ideas are the same, but ’97 does it a lot more efficiently and clearly. I’ve spent a lot of time praising ’95, but ’97 mostly wins out on these last few scenes. In ’95, Hyde spends a while trying to get the letter from Lucy, while in ’97 he just finds it on the dresser. In both he is clearly already aware of the letter, and it’s definitely a power trip getting Lucy to admit she has it in ‘95, but it feels unnecessary. Hyde also brings up Jekyll later in ’95 and I don’t like the way he does it as much. In ’95 he just asks if she’s seen Jekyll and then Lucy asks if he knows Jekyll. His answer in ’95 is a really classic example of saying what sounds like a list of different things, but really it’s just a bunch of synonyms: “Of course I know him, as well as I know myself. We are very old friends, he and I. Very close to one another. We share all of each other’s secrets.” ’97 opts for, “Oh, we’re close, very close, he and I. We share everything, just as you and I do.” The sentiment is the same in both, but ‘95’s longer list feels muddled and it makes it hard to figure out which of those items is important. ’97 keeps it focused, which makes it easier to understand the implications of the line, which is this weird intimacy Hyde has with Jekyll that Lucy wants and doesn’t get. In ’97, Hyde also adds, “Jekyll’s such a very busy man,” which again is a taunt I really like because it implies that Jekyll couldn’t make time for Lucy – which is precisely what Lucy fears – while Hyde oh so generously has. ’97 also brings us more cleanly back to the conversation about Hyde visiting Lucy, creating this lovely weird triangle between the Hyde, Jekyll, and Lucy.

In both, Hyde’s anger then flares after he reads the letter. At the core, the anger is the same: Hyde wants to possess Lucy and something is threatening that, but how we get there is different. In ’95, Hyde says, “What is it you find in him that you can’t find in me?” and follows it up with, “Your friendship with him has hurt me very deeply.” So let’s go all the way back to Lucy and Hyde’s first meeting and that line about Hyde being Lucy’s guardian language. The other reason I think that guardian angel is meant to be sincere is because of this moment right here. Right now, Hyde is genuinely hurt. At various points in the show, Jekyll is envious of Hyde, but this is the first time Hyde is envious of Jekyll. For a moment, he is genuinely vulnerable. Again, I don’t like this characterization, but that’s what’s happening. In ’95, as Hyde accuses Lucy of hurting him, he tears up the letter and throws little pieces at her, which emphasizes his smallness and instability. In comparison, in ’97, Hyde gets angry because the letter tells Lucy to run away. However, he isn’t threatened by this and is not vulnerable. In ’97, Lucy lunges for the letter, and Hyde doesn’t even flinch. He simply leans forward and crumples the letter up; clearly, he is not afraid of her, he is not afraid of Jekyll. His following line, “Now you weren’t planning on leaving the city without saying goodbye, were you Lucy?” is not a question. It is a statement that he will not let her leave.

At this point, both versions build in tension as Hyde sings a reprise of “Sympathy, Tenderness,” which Lucy first sang when Jekyll was tending for the wound Hyde gave her. This is another really stellar example of Hyde throwing the sweetness of Jekyll and Lucy’s relationship back into their faces, reversing the caring nature of their relationship to the point that it becomes the lead-up to him killing her. This moment is slower in ’95. The tension peaks as he stabs her, but then the band drops out, leaving the piano to play an almost lullaby version of “Sympathy, Tenderness” and it becomes a moment of mocking tenderness as Lucy crawls from the bed, and Hyde brings her back up into his lap, cradling her as he slits her throat. In ’97 it’s just pure escalation. He stabs her sooner and harder, and when she tumbles out of the bed, he yanks her onto her knees and slits her throat before kicking her body down onto the stage’s apron and running off. I think I can go either way on this escalation. I like the overall escalation in ’97 better, but Hyde’s tenderness in ’95 is real scary.

We are not, however, quite done with this scene. This is the end of the scene in ’97, but not in ’95. In ’95 the scene is still going, and one more thing happens. This is absolutely the wildest difference between the two shows: After killing Lucy, Hyde frantically washes his hands in a very Lady MacBeth out-out-damn spot kind of way. He starts to lose control of the body and takes it as an opportunity to hurt Jekyll, saying, “Come on out, Henry. Take a look,” at which point Jekyll is confronted by Lucy’s corpse. In the pursuing chaos of music and Jekyll’s screams, we move back to Jekyll’s lab, which he is absolutely wrecking.

Similar to Hyde and Lucy’s first meeting, this has pacing issues because it’s another pause, but it also feels so completely and entirely necessary. In ’97 Jekyll basically gets away with never confronting what he’s done, and having to see Lucy’s dead body forces him to confront face-to-face the damage he’s done. The switch from Hyde to Jekyll’s perspective is also just really devastating. It’s a wild move that I had not even considered before seeing the ‘95 version, and I love it. It makes it horribly clear what Jekyll has done and tips Jekyll over the edge, making it clear in a way that isn’t present in ‘97 that Jekyll has lost control. I am really pleased that they brought this back in ’13, though it doesn’t work as well because ’13 Jekyll is in general more depressed than volatile, so it doesn’t have the explosive effect that it has in ’95.

The last two scenes to consider are “Confrontation” and the wedding. “Confrontation” in ’97 is better, no questions asked. In ’95, Hyde’s part of the song is done in voice-over, which I hate a lot. There are attempts in almost all of the versions to use voice-over at various points and I hate all of them. But for this scene in particular, the entire point of this show is that this is happening to one person. Hyde is not a separate entity, and that is what makes his presence scary. Doing Hyde’s part of the song in voice-over makes him separate from Jekyll, and it’s a bad terrible awful choice.

“Confrontation” in ’97 is great. Cuccioli sings Jekyll with his right side to the audience and turns to sing Hyde’s part with his left to the audience. I think the blocking of it is really clever and it emphasizes how Jekyll is struggling to control himself, not to mention it’s impressive to watch. The simple staging and spotlight also puts a laser focus on Jekyll, allowing him to reach the fever pitch that is the climax of the show.

Because of Jekyll’s moment with Lucy’s body in ‘95, everything does amp up a little more in ‘95, which I like, but it makes the hard cut to the wedding even more jarring than it already is. There is, generally, across the board, a serious lack of falling action. Lucy’s death and “Confrontation” are the climax, and after that all we have left is the wedding. The wedding does eventually reach an appropriate pitch, but the hard cut to happy-go-lucky wedding is weird, especially because we haven’t been given a lot of reason to believe that Jekyll either 1) believes he has Hyde under control, or 2) is desperate enough to be fooling himself.There is some dialogue in some versions to the effect that he thinks he has this under control, although the ’94 recording is the only one where it’s said explicitly and often enough to really catch it. But, the main difference between ’95 and ’97 is how Jekyll dies. In ’95, Utterson shoots him, and in ’97 Jekyll runs himself through with Utterson’s sword after Utterson fails to do so. I like ’97 better because it’s just more interesting if it’s Jekyll who makes the decision. Since Jekyll is our main character, I’m fundamentally more interested in the question, Will Jekyll kill himself? than, Will Utterson kill Jekyll?

And that’s the show! I like both ’95 and ’97, for different reasons. ’95 is more complicated, occasionally too complicated, but it has some show-stopper moments that aren’t present in ’97.’97 is just a lot smoother overall, and generally a better show for the medium it’s working in. The basic shape of the show as it’s present in ’97 is better by 2001 – they’ve added in some necessary clarification and a little more doubt to Jekyll’s character – but I hate David Hasselhoff as Jekyll, so I’ll take ‘97. And then there’s ’13, which is terrible and I hate all of its choices. Mostly I just really like the cast of ’95 and ’97 way better than all the other versions. At the end of the day I’m glad the two versions exist and that I got the chance to see them and spend several months obsessing over them when I should have been focusing on getting a Master’s degree.

As a brief reminder, Jekyll has gone to visit the Red Rat, where he meets a Lucy, a sex worker there.

After Lucy sings her opening songs, Jekyll and Lucy meet. I found a description of the show that said Jekyll and Lucy are fascinated with each other, which I’ll admit I don’t really see in any of the shows I’ve watched, although I like the chemistry the most in ’95 because they seem to find each other pretty entertaining and unusual compared to who they usually hang out with. In both, Lucy inspires Jekyll to perform his good-and-evil experiment on himself. The framing of this makes more sense in ’95. In ’95, Lucy’s pimp calls her over and when Jekyll asks if he can help, she says, “Some fires you have to walk through by yourself,” and I understand how this translates into his decision. In ’97 he says her “Good and Evil” song inspired him because it’s about making choices, but that kind of implies he either fundamentally didn’t understand the song or he thinks that doing the experiment is the evil choice? Since the song is all about choosing evil over good? I know why in ’97 they moved Lucy’s conversation with her pimp to before her conversation with Jekyll and why it’s predicated on him hitting her, instead of him just calling her over: it’s all about making the show snappier and putting the problems up front in ‘97. But that means the writer had to find another lightbulb moment for Jekyll, and I don’t think the song “Good and Evil” makes sense. So I guess I lean toward the ’95 version here, with the exception of that distracting running gag about innuendos, but otherwise the meeting is relatively similar between the two shows.

From there, Jekyll goes home to perform the experiment on himself and transforms into Hyde. It’s pretty similar in ’95 and ’97 – although there’s more physical movement from Jekyll in ’97 that I think really emphasizes the importance of this moment. But I feel compelled to talk about ’13 here because this is my favorite example of why ‘13’s staging sucks. In ’13, the scene is a completely bonkers mad scientist sequence with a minimal lab set that’s mostly made up of ridiculous Disney-esque, huge, glowing test tubes, as compared to the much more detailed and atmospheric labs of ’95 and ’97. In ’13, Jekyll then hooks himself up to plastic tubing and does the entire transformation in what looks like an electric chair, which is both sillier and more boring because it completely cuts off his range of motion, so he just sits there instead of writhing on the floor. It’s corny and somehow more over-the-top than ’95 and ’97, and I hate it.

Anyway. This leads us to the next big change. In ‘97, Hyde sings “Alive” and then we jump forward several weeks as his friends discuss his disappearance from society and growing obsession with his work, leaving us to use our imaginations to fill in the blank of what Hyde’s been up to. In ‘95, after he sings “Alive,” he makes his way back to the Red Rat in search of Lucy, and then sings “Alive” again. The meeting between Lucy and Hyde is added back in ’13, but it’s much shorter.

I am torn about this decision in the exact same way I am torn about Lucy’s initial characterization. On the one hand, including Lucy and Hyde’s meeting has pacing issues and it requires Hyde to ultimately sing “Alive” three times, which is too many. It also means that instead of moving from the climactic transformation to his friends’ growing concern, there’s a large pause in momentum as Hyde goes to meet Lucy. It also feels like it’s setting up an arc between them, where they’ll meet several times, but we don’t see them together again until “Dangerous Game” near the end. Because the scene ends with Lucy running away from Hyde, it also begs the question of how he ultimately got his hands on her if she’s successfully turned him down without, seemingly, any consequences from the brothel or her pimp. On the other hand, the meeting between Jekyll and Lucy begs for a comparative moment with Hyde, and it’s weird that it doesn’t happen in ‘97. Technically, at the end of “Alive” in ’97, Lucy appears onstage and Hyde grabs her, so the show was aware of the problem, but you don’t really get to see the contrast.

The first time I watched Lucy and Hyde’s meeting in ‘95, I hated it, but, again, I think I’ve talked myself around. The first thing we have to do is ask: Why is Hyde here? Is he here because of Jekyll or Lucy? If he’s here for Jekyll, is it to taunt Jekyll or create distance between him and Jekyll? If he’s here for Lucy is it just to have sex with her or is it because he thinks he can connect with her like Jekyll did? I think the reason this scene is so confusing is because it is all of these things. So let’s work through them.

Hyde returns to the Red Rat, calling for champagne and being generally intimidating. He bribes his way in with 50 guineas and approaches Lucy. He says Lucy looks like she could use a good friend. One of my favorite moves with Hyde’s character is when he takes something from a conversation between Jekyll and Lucy and throws it in their faces, because it is absolutely devastating every single time he does it. Specifically, it’s devastating because the way he changes the intended meaning of the dialogue is both cruel and clever. It also makes it clear how dangerous he is because he seems to be the only one who knows everything that’s happening. Lucy of course doesn’t know what Jekyll’s done and while Jekyll doesn’t retain all of Hyde’s memories, Hyde seems to retain all of Jekyll’s. Hyde is basically holding all the cards. By ’97 there are very few of these lines from Hyde, but this scene in ‘95 has several. This line about being a friend is a call-back to when Jekyll offered his friendship to Lucy, and I love it because Hyde has so clearly taken Jekyll’s genuine intentions and completely ground them into the dirt. Most of these call-back statements are directed at Lucy, but given her frequent lack of response, I get the impression that he’s mostly taunting Jekyll. So this line is great and I love it. The problem is that we then very rapidly switch motivations.

Hyde then says that after tonight Lucy will never forget him, which still feels directed at Jekyll – he will get to have what Jekyll doesn’t. But he follows it up by claiming he’ll be Lucy’s guardian angel and guide to salvation. I have watched this moment so many times, and it’s still jarring. It’s obviously in contrast to Jekyll’s offer for help, and my instinct is to read it as sarcastic, that he’ll make her life hell, because it fits better with the lines around it. Specifically, he follows this up with, “A toast to romance, to those unafraid of taking a chance.” This is another call-back I really love. When Jekyll and Lucy met, Jekyll told her he was looking for someone for his experiment, someone unafraid to take a chance. As I mentioned, Lucy takes this as innuendo and sings, “Here’s to romance, to those unafraid of taking a chance.” Jekyll then realizes his mistake and leaves. So Jekyll has formed his connection with Lucy by turning their relationship into one of friendship and respect. Then Hyde comes back and throws it in both of their faces. He sees their potential romance, and he is here to get to it first and replace it with a far uglier romance.

Okay, great, but the problem is that his delivery when he says he’ll be her guardian angel is absolutely sincere. I struggle with this because he isn’t someone who helps people, and he is very aware of that. The only way I can make sense of this is if he believes that he and Lucy will connect as partners in crime, that she really didn’t like Jekyll all that much and will choose him (evil) over Jekyll (good). That isn’t, of course, what ultimately happens. Part of the reason I struggle with this is that Hyde has a terrifying view of people, but he is also very, very savvy. He has a clear sense of himself and a clear sense of what other people think of him. But this moment introduces the possibility that he has misunderstood Lucy, which is a really brief blip of a characterization that we get basically nowhere else except during Lucy’s murder. So I think what this moment is trying to do is introduce Lucy as a blind spot for Hyde. He believes he loves her, and that she will love him back, and is surprised when this doesn’t happen.

I do have to thank ’13 for one thing here. ’13 simplifies this scene, focusing on Hyde’s violent possessiveness. Hyde’s delivery of the line about guardian angels in ’13 is absolutely sarcastic and it made it a lot easier to figure out what Cuccioli was doing in comparison. Cuccioli’s Hyde is, again, more complicated. I’m ultimately not sure what would have to be changed to make this scene work. ’13 does actually do the work of simplifying and streamlining Hyde’s violent possessiveness towards Lucy, and I hate it, so I don’t know. I don’t know what to do with this scene. The most I can say is that while ’95 is really messy, I do think all the characterizations they’re trying to fit in are really fascinating.

The other thing ’13 adds is that we see Hyde give Lucy the wound that she’ll go to Jekyll for later, which is now my favorite example of tell-over-show because it completely ruins the later shock of her wound.

The rest of the scene in ’95 is pretty straightforward. In response to Lucy’s continued sarcasm, Hyde grabs her hair, and says, “I am the man, mark my words well, with whom you’ll share heaven or hell.” Either this is just a continuation of the violent possessiveness he’s clearly been building up to, or it’s that plus anger at being turned down when he assumed Lucy would choose him over Jekyll. Lucy is not impressed or intimidated, and goes on to reject his money and run off. Again, this makes it unclear how he got ahold of her later and it completely shuts down her supposed attraction to him in “Dangerous Game,” so this does create some logistical problems.

Quick wrap-up on this scene and then I’ll talk about Jekyll and Lucy’s next meeting in the next post. In ’95, the bouncer then attempts to kick Hyde out, and Hyde beats up most of the den. As he begins his second reprise of “Alive,” he sings “Predators leave for the prey the pursue. This time the predator’s me!” and gestures at Lucy as she runs off, a move that gives the song just a little more intention than it has in ‘97. As I said, I like the meeting, generally, but, the pacing and logistical issues persist, so I guess pick your poison, as long as your poison isn’t the ’13 version.

Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical opened in 1990 in Houston, the original concept album recorded four years later in 1994 with Anthony Warlow. It ran off-Broadway in 1995 before premiering on Broadway in 1997 with Robert Cuccioli before he was replaced by David Hasselhoff, who performed until 2001. There were a slew of touring performances all the way up to 2017, but I am not going down that rabbit hole. The show briefly revived on Broadway in 2013 with Constantine Maroulis, but closed early.

That is a lot of names. You do not need to know them all. Robert Cuccioli is the only one we care about, and also the only one we like.

When I first wrote this, I had only seen the recording of the pre-Broadway run in ‘95 and the Broadway premiere in ’97, and those are the two I’ll be talking about. But the other versions are worth mentioning because they often clarify what is and isn’t happening in ’95 and ‘97. Also I hate the 2013 version and I want to gripe about it. So here are the materials I’m working with: in addition to the ’95 and ’97 recordings, there’s the ’94 album, two official 2001 recordings, one with David Hasselhoff and one with the understudy Rob Evan, and a recording of the show in 2013. At no point was this show not changing. The concept recording in ’94 is pretty different from the run in ’95, which in turn is different from ’97, and even though ’97 and 2001 are fairly similar, they were still tweaking things in 2001. In fact, somewhere between ’97 and 2001 they seem to have started reverting back to the pre-Broadway run. Generally speaking, changes pre-’97 are characterized by cutting for pacing and post-’97 trends toward addition in service of complicating/clarifying Jekyll. (The staging and music is also often very different and I’ll talk about that occasionally, but I am a) not super qualified to talk about them and b) I am desperately trying not to devolve into pure, unadulterated tangents.)

To be more specific, the changes leading up to the Broadway run are made in the service of pacing and scrubbing out the bawdier parts. While this does clarify some of the muddier characterizations and make the story snappier – something it sorely needed – it does so at the expense of depth and it occasionally obscures motivation. Jekyll pre-Broadway is a lot more reflective and generally conflicted about his choices. In ’97, Jekyll almost never questions the fact that he’s responsible for the deaths of like 5 people. A lot of things also make more sense in the ’97 Broadway run if you go back and watch the earlier version. Like, why does Emma sing “Emma’s Reasons” to this man Simon? Who is Simon? Turns out in ’94 he had a whole little villain arc because he was going to marry Emma. And that’s also why he gets the dramatic positioning of being the last one Hyde kills. By ’13, this is entirely gone since they’ve cut Emma’s song and Hyde doesn’t even kill Simon. But we’re talking about ’97. By cutting the bawdier elements, the show also loses some of its fun genre-pieces, and the attempt to make it more family-friendly I think sands off the edges. It also waters down Lucy’s character because she is at the heart of a lot of those genre-pieces, and removing them makes her less jaded and more naive. That being said, I think many of these changes were also made because while, in theory, I like a more complicated Jekyll and a more gothic-savvy show, where those elements still exist in ’95, they don’t always work, frequently because there is not enough time to explore them in a 2-hour musical.

I was also very prepared to defend ’97 as superior to ’95 when I first wrote this because I think the pacing is a lot better and, like I said, the things I like in theory often didn’t pan out on the stage. But ’97 did cut some killer moments and I wish there was a version of this show that made Jekyll’s complexity and the genre-pieces work.

A quick note on the cast: Robert Cuccilio plays Jekyll in both ’95 and ’97, so like I said, for my purposes he’s the only one we care about. Linda Eder also plays Lucy in both. In an attempt to maintain some semblance of focus, I’m mostly going to talk about the changes to Jekyll and Lucy, and the story around them. And with that, here we go!

In both versions, Henry Jekyll is driven to discover a way to separate the good and evil in humanity after his father is put in an insane asylum. Jekyll believes doing so will help treat people like his father. He then proposes his plan to the Board of Governors, who turn it down. In ‘97 he then basically never mentions this motivation again. His fiancé Emma, Lisa in ‘95, is also in this show but way less than I remember and also she’s not really important for my purposes.

In ‘97, when Utterson, Jekyll’s friend and lawyer, brings Jekyll to the brothel the Red Rat (it’s called something else in ’95 that I can’t catch), Jekyll asks, “Why on earth have you brought me here?” to which Utterson responds, “You need the relaxation.” In ‘95, it’s less clear why they’re there, but Jekyll doesn’t have any hesitations about it, and he’s possibly the one who suggested it. (In ’13, they flip it and it’s Utterson who protests and Jekyll who insists they go in, because Utterson has failed to throw him a bachelor party. ’13 Jekyll is then promptly flabbergasted when Lucy flirts with him, and I’m not sure what he expected would happen at a brothel?) The change from ’95 to ’97 is part of the larger trend of scrubbing Jekyll of the few questionable qualities he has in ‘95. There are places where I don’t like this scrubbing, but in this instance I don’t think that frequenting brothels really adds anything to his character and it makes some of his later charges against the Board of Governs seem pretty poorly conceived. I also personally think that Jekyll being mildly uncomfortable at the brothel, rather than just being there, is more interesting, especially as he negotiates his interaction with Lucy. The discomfort also creates a wider gap between him and Hyde that I think clarifies the character.

There’s also a conversation on the way to the brothel between Jekyll and Utterson that is cut from ’97. In ’95, Utterson says, “Oh, Henry, how can you contend that only an evil man is free?” Jekyll responds, “’Cause it’s true. John, we all have dark impulses within us, you know that. But we follow society’s rules. The truly evil mind doesn’t, so he’s free. As an animal is free to do exactly as he wants when he wants with no restrictions of any kind.” Utterson then goes on to say that he believes humans are fundamentally good and Jekyll disagrees. This conversation comes up a few times, and while, again, it adds complexity, I don’t really trust this show to have philosophical conversations that make any sense. The attempt to justify and complicate Jekyll’s theory by positing that evil people are free – the phrasing and Jekyll’s delivery implying no small amount of envy – is…weird. It goes against his whole point, which is that his project will save mental patients, not free up an overly rigid society. In 2001 they have kind of fixed this. This moment isn’t added back in, but there are others that suggest Jekyll is envious of Hyde’s freedom, and his growing doubt highlights how he is losing sight of his original purpose. But to have Jekyll already on board with Hyde’s philosophy means nothing changes, Jekyll just gets more violent. While there is a story there, it’s not this story. This story works better if he is either basically good (’97) or has yet to admit to himself that he wanted to be Hyde a little too much (2001).

The one place this idea of freedom does exist throughout all the shows is when Hyde first appears, describing himself as free, and then singing in “Alive” that “animals trapped behind bars in the zoo need to run rampant and free.” Without the earlier conversation this is more of an expression of Hyde’s headspace, a violence so chaotic that it’s lost all sense of empathy or connection with other people. In ’95 that’s still true, but it also suggests praise for, or at least envy of, his behavior, which again works a lot better if Jekyll’s doubt comes after this moment, rather than him already being on Hyde’s side.

Jekyll’s philosophical conversation with Utterson about good and evil in ‘95 also leads to a running gag at the brothel that feels very out of character for Jekyll, as it positions him as both naïve and a little silly. Jekyll describes one of the prostitutes as “unfettered, unencumbered, unchained” – the delivery of which gives a real uncomfortable male-doctor-describes-female-patient-like-an-objective vibe – and then asks if she’s free in a tone of voice that I can only describe as when the Fool or Clown character sets up an obvious joke. It’s very distracting. She responds, “Not free, your lordship. But cheap enough for the likes of you.” I don’t think the set-up to her punchline works, again Jekyll doesn’t feel that naïve, and I don’t understand why he continues to be oblivious when he then suggests one of the women might volunteer for his experiment, which the woman promptly interprets as sexual. (If you like this exchange, which I don’t, they have actually fixed it in ’13. The sexual innuendo is still there, but Jekyll isn’t quite so oblivious to it.) It works even less the second time in ’95 when he asks Lucy if she wants to participate in an experiment. First, it’s really sleazy that he asks her, given the power dynamic – something ’97 points out when Utterson misinterprets Jekyll as planning on using Lucy and Jekyll responds, “Good heavens, John, you really think I’m such an unprincipled character?” – Second, it’s already been established that any use of “experiment” at the Red Rat will be read as innuendo, which is what happens, and it feels weird enough that Jekyll didn’t anticipate it the first time, let alone the second. In ‘97, when Jekyll gives Lucy his card in case she needs a friend, he clarifies that he really means it like that, as just a friend, a change that makes him feel more intentional about his relationship with Lucy instead of being the butt of a joke.

So let’s talk about Lucy. Okay. So. While there are significant differences in Lucy’s characterization between the shows, fundamentally, at her core, Lucy is the same. In both shows, Lucy is the prostitute with a heart of gold, a characterization that I will briefly argue is inherently flawed and cannot be overcome despite Eder’s monumental efforts to do so. The problem with the prostitute with a heart of gold is that she is inherently a victim of circumstance. She is someone who ‘deserves better’ but for unclear reasons cannot escape her current predicament, and simply waits for the right rich white man to save her. I don’t think it’s an interesting character and it demonizes sex workers and sex work in general. It’s a problematic trope and it puts a lot of breaks on Lucy’s range. It also means that no matter how I twist it, Lucy’s arc is one where her salvation is dependent on a man. However, as I said, Eder is putting her all into it and the character she has imagined is a lot better than the script she’s been given, so we’ll give her her fare do.

In ‘95, Lucy is introduced in a floor show with “Bring on the Men,” an introduction that doesn’t so much establish her love for the job as make her fairly world-weary and jaded. She’s clearly determined to do her job well and knows how to have fun, but I don’t get the impression that she really enjoys it. Rather, she’s done this long enough to be very aware of her standing in the world and has made herself powerful by putting up a lot of walls – we literally see her as the performer before we see her as the person. When I first watched this, I saw her initial characterization as clashing with her later starry-eyed affection for Jekyll, but I have since talked myself around. Yes, she’s got a lot of walls, but her thematic statement is: “A girl alone, all on her own must try to have a heart of stone. So I try not to make it known my yearning.” Her arc, then, is one of opening up and being vulnerable with Jekyll. I don’t want to read her as the cold, damaged woman who needs to open up to a man – doing so does, in fact, get her killed – so the best I can do is acknowledge the complexity that Eder brings, imagining Lucy as someone who has made her choices and holds her own through a combination of dark humor and apathy. Eder does ultimately do a really fantastic job expressing both the Lucy who is over your nonsense and the Lucy who is learning how to plan for the future again.

In ‘97, Lucy is a waif. Again, Eder doesn’t want her to be a waif and gives her a lot of savvy and humor, but the script is really working against her. She’s first introduced backstage after arriving late because she’s been listening to speeches of some sort in Hyde Park. She says it’s because she wants to learn, a change that I think is meant to give her more agency, but it isn’t followed up on and feels like an addition made by someone who doesn’t understand how to empower a female character. She then sings “No One Knows Who I Am” to her fellow performers. As the title of her first song implies, she is misunderstood, lost, and unhappy, a bit waifish, if you will. The comradery with her fellow performers is nice and given more space than in ‘95, and it does allow for a cool moment where she sings, “Nobody knows, not even you,” and points to the audience. I don’t think the implication that the audience misinterprets her quite works because, she’s ultimately just who you think she is, but I like the sentiment. “No One Knows Who I Am” is also in ’95, but it comes much later. In ’97, we start with the knowledge that Lucy is unhappy, vulnerable, and looking for a way out. In general, she feels younger, like she hasn’t had the time to get jaded. We also see her as a person before we see her as a performer, unlike in ’95, and so that vulnerability remains. This simplifies Lucy, just as Jekyll is simplified in ’97, so while her arc is still one of increasing hope, it doesn’t require her to overcome as much.

There is also, of course, option 3, which is the ’13 version. “Bring on the Men” is swapped out for “Good and Evil” in ’97, but it’s brought back in ’13. The musical arrangement in ’13 is terrible, but Lucy seems a lot more gung-ho about her job, implying that she’s more the type to throw herself into things, even while aware of her own reservations, and this does pretty cleanly transition into her throwing herself into the hope that Jekyll will save her.

As I said, “Bring on the Men” is swapped out for “Good and Evil” in ‘97, and while it attempts to reinstate some of Lucy’s jaded nature, it’s overpowered by Lucy’s introduction in “No One Knows Who I Am,” and the fact that at the end of the song her pimp immediately slaps her, causing Jekyll to run to her aid. “Bring on the Men” is the most prominent of the gothic genre-pieces that gets cut, and I do like “Good and Evil” better as a thematic statement, but I have been talked into respecting “Bring on the Men” as injecting some necessary fun and gothic style. Still, as a thematic statement, “Good and Evil” allows Lucy to be part of the show’s larger conversation about good vs. evil. Specifically, she understands wickedness in a way that Jekyll fundamentally does not. I just wish Lucy got the chance to make this case to Jekyll because it seems like a piece of the conversation that he at no point grasps.

So let’s do a quick warp up and end here for the moment. I find myself increasingly coming down on the side of liking the added complexity of ’95, and also increasingly understanding why it was cut. I like the complexity a lot, but I’ve really had to put in the work to get it make sense, and as a project that is conceived as a live musical that you watch once all the way through, I understand the desire for a story that reads more smoothly. I also think that even as a recording that I can now watch repeatedly and in pieces, the transitions between motivations within scenes and the changes in characters over the course of the show are often not given enough space to follow. This is true in Lucy’s characterization, and it is really, really true in later scenes. So I’ll say that as a person who is currently writing this comparison, I love the complexity in ’95 and I love that, with time, I can make it work. As someone watching it through once and mostly wants to enjoy it as a clean story, ’97 is way better.