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.