The Broadway Musical. - movie review

Commonweal, June 20, 1997 by Celia Wren

Obviously the musical's creators have hit upon the right mixture of music, violence (serial killing, sexual torture, a bishop who is burned alive, etc.), and pseudoprofundity. Certainly the ballad-heavy score, which is frequently stirring, matches the mood of hysterical gothicism. A set that seems in constant motion--scrims, scaffolding, smoke, a vial-infested laboratory that slides forward, an intermittent backdrop of the brooding Thames--intensifies the phantasmagoric atmosphere.

Whereas Stevenson's story kept an eerie silence on the subject of Edward Hyde's specific misdeeds, the musical is explicit to the point of absurdity, giving Jekyll/Hyde (the swashbuckling Robert Cuccioli) two love interests--one madonna, one whore (Christiane Noll and Linda Eder, both possessed of angelic voices)--and following him zealously as he stalks victims through the gloom-shrouded streets.

But Bricusse's real innovation is to splice every fragment of possible subtext right into the lyrics. Scuttling through the shadows, a chorus of the rag-clad, downtrodden poor sings, over and over, that "it's all a facade," as though we were too stupid to understand the hypocrisy of Victorian morals. Other mammoth themes--the war between good and evil, the rivalry between the public and the private self, the conflict between end and means--get thrust forward just as blatantly.

This heavy-handed candor deprives us of the opportunity to think through the issues ourselves. With no need to interpret the production, and thus to participate in it, spectators are reduced to voyeurs. Stevenson's story, vague about the struggle for Jekyll's soul, invites us to see his strife within ourselves. The musical puts the contest center stage: At the evening's climax, Cuccioli repeatedly shifts back and forth from Jekyll to Hyde in a split second, altering his posture (upright for Jekyll, stooping for Hyde), his voice (higher for Jekyll, lower for Hyde), and even his hair (slicked back for Jekyll, unruly for Hyde), synchronous with a pulsing spotlight. The effect is striking, but it narrows the focus to a single man with sensational problems rather than suggesting the world.

An early casualty of Broadway's musical melee was the ebullient Play On! (book by Cheryl L. West), which set Shakespeare's Twelfth Night in 1940s' Harlem, and let its characters express themselves through old favorites by Duke Ellington. Though some scenes had a forced quality, and the connecting story was a threadbare excuse for the songs, the personalities--like the stately composer Duke (Carl Anderson), or the skittish femme fatale Lady Liv (Tonya Pinkins)--were more distinct, more human, and vastly more appealing than anyone treading the boards of Titanic or haunting Jekyll & Hyde. Even the scenic design--a color-saturated Art Deco cityscape had a consistency and logic the other productions lack. Play On! had no pretentions and much cheerfulness--no wonder it closed. When musicals can pontificate about human misfortune, why should they bother to sing and dance?