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.