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.