"Unfortunately there’s no way to digitally airbrush away the hokum that pervades the whole show, like the ample stage smoke puffing away throughout the proceedings, giving a most commendable featured performance as the fabled pea-soupy London fog. The actors portraying the sniveling or snobbish enemies of Dr. Jekyll all perform their chores with flavorsome relish, and Teal Wicks, as his ladylike love interest Emma Carew, suffers with noble fortitude as her hopes for happy matrimony begin to grow dim indeed.
Mr. Wildhorn’s score is probably his most appealing, as it mixes equal parts Hammer horror, Andrew Lloyd Webber-style pseudo-operatics and adult-contemporary-radio anthems. I’ll cop to a happy goosepimple or two as Mr. Maroulis and Ms. Cox let loose during their impassioned solo songs. The music’s mixture of styles — there’s even a bit of “Carmina Burana”-type shrieking tossed in for good measure — does make for a bizarre combination, but the variations are somewhat smoothed over by the unyielding stream of banalities in the lyrics by Leslie Bricusse, who also wrote the book.
A cursory reading of the libretto gives rise to yet another urgent question. Do the clichés in the lyrics outnumber the exclamation points, or vice versa? But I’m afraid I’d rather leave that one to those with a deeper interest in textual analysis of Frank Wildhorn musicals."
Huge musical fan ever since seeing SHENANDOAH at age 8 on B'way, followed by the '76 the revival of FIDDLER with Zero Mostel.
Working on my own Musical Comedy.
"...we were in Wildhornia, that land of dark roiling clouds, where actors scream, all the time, and no one alive-or, especially, dead-is safe from predation."
I'm easily entertained when it comes to a musical, I even somewhat enjoyed Wonderland ... but this is the first show EVER that I wanted to leave at intermission. I stayed just to see the confrontation and literally laughed when he sand to a projection! UGGG!
Eh, I still liked it. It isn't theatre gold. The projections during the confrontation were obnoxious. It was still fun and worth the $25 I spent on it. I still wouldn't recommend paying full price for it, but if you can get cheap tickets and have a couple hours to kill, it is worth it. I swear.
(In keeping with Jekyll and Hyde's split personality, I split my personality for purposes of the review. e.g.:) Me: Constantine Maroulis...would be reason enough to stay home — if Frank Wildhorn’s music and Leslie Briscusse’s book didn’t already do that. Me: Who are you to judge Frank Wildhorn’s “Jekyll and Hyde,” which got four Tony nominations and lasted on Broadway for nearly four years, and has been a popular album for two decades? OR, for that matter, Constantine Maroulis, who from sixth-place finalist on the Season 4 of “American Idol,” has fashioned a respectable recording and stage career, earning a Tony nomination for originating the lead role in “Rock of Ages” on Broadway? Me: He was fine as a rocker in “Rock of Ages.” He is no more convincing as a physician in Victorian England than is the doorman in the Jekyll and Hyde restaurant a couple of blocks away from the Marquis Theater. Jekyll and Hyde Review: Good vs. Bad on Broadway
The only thing that might keep this show open is its decent word-of-mouth reviews. I don't see it extending into August unless some miracle of ticket sales happens soon.
A Chorus Line revival played its final Broadway performance on August 17, 2008. The tour played its final performance on August 21, 2011. A new non-equity tour started in October 2012 played its final performance on March 23, 2013. Another non-equity tour launched on January 20, 2018. The tour ended its US run in Kansas City and then toured throughout Japan August & September 2018.