Dr Jeckyll And Mr Hyde

CLO finds the right balance in 'Jekyll & Hyde'

The atmospheric thriller "Jekyll & Hyde" re-emerges from the dark shadows of the Pittsburgh CLO seasons' past to once again explore man's struggle with the duality of good and evil within, and to deliver a few powerhouse solos by talented performers.

The Dr. Henry Jekyll we first meet is obsessed with casting out the demons that drive men mad -- good men, like his father. Possessed by his quest, he's not quite the good doctor who had come to be beloved by his loyal friend Utterson and his fiance Emma, but not yet the man he's going to be.

Even the best of motives can go awry. "Use your gifts wisely," his future father-in-law Sir Danvers warns him early on.

Good advice, unheeded. Kevin Gray's Jekyll is a man on a mission, arrogant in his certainty and angered by hypocritical hospital board members who would keep him from experimenting on a human subject. They speak of ethics and morals that they fail to practice, which pushes Jekyll to take drastic measures.

Mr. Gray reprises the dual role he performed at CLO in 2002, directed again by Robert Cuccioli, Broadway's original "J&H" star. It's a brutally demanding role, and Mr. Gray wrestles bravely from beginning to end with Frank Wildhorn's swelling, soaring score. The hair trick -- ponytail, good Henry Jekyll; hair loose, bad Edward Hyde -- gets old fast, but Mr. Gray shows great range from the doctor's struggle to hold on to his deteriorating humanity to the creepy, gravel-voiced menace of Mr. Hyde.

There's a lot of melodrama and just the occasional chuckle in the book by Leslie Bricusse, adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson's 19th-century classic, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." The musical was conceived by Mr. Wildhorn with Pittsburgher Steve Cuden and further tinkered with by Mr. Cuccioli from several scripts.

It's quite an undertaking for the lead, and in this production Mr. Gray is aided enormously by the women who love Dr. Jekyll but fall victim emotionally and physically to his darker side.

Elizabeth Stanley, who recently spent a year on Broadway as the lone woman among rock legends in "Million Dollar Quartet," makes a stunning debut for Pittsburgh CLO. She plays Lucy, the prostitute with a heart of gold who falls hard for Jekyll but has the misfortune to fall in with Hyde. Ms. Stanley wowed the audience with dynamic solos of "Someone Like You" and "A New Life," songs full of hope and possibilities. She also was one-half of the beautiful duet "In His Eyes" with Brynn O'Malley's devoted Emma.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: A Portrait of Drug Addiction | The Blood ...

(Stevenson 79).

Many people know the tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at its most basic level; an educated man creates a potion that transforms him into a creature that terrorizes London’s nighttime streets. This is correct in saying but the entire story and its multifaceted elements are missing. The story, or the novel the tale comes from was not just about a mad scientist; it was about watching a man of high aristocratic stature become consumed by the power of chemical addiction or “The story of Dr Jekyll and his alter ego Mr. Hyde illustrates a moralistic attitude to addiction” (Mathiasen 492). I use the phrase “chemical dependency” because it is never stated in the novel just exactly what Jekyll is ingesting (always speak in the present tense when discussing a novel). Before we get into all the heavy and dense material, let’s first see what we are dealing with as a book.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a short read and depending on your edition, it can be under 100 pages. The edition I own is only about 88 pages but yet the story speaks volumes about mans inability to be sterile or controlled. The purpose of my article here is to talk about how this book is a look into addiction and how Stevenson showed a man’s degradation over time. I want to also attack the idea that it is not a battle between mans nature of good and evil. was written in the 1800’s or what can be referred to as the Victorian era. This was a time of repressed emotions and trying to create a more conservative way of living, though these intentions were lost because humans enjoy feeding their carnal nature. Dualism is discussed mostly as a form of philosophy but in this context it will represent the parallel ‘other’ or life. The story must not be contextualized in the Victorian era but specifically, “The novel needs to be looked at in the context of its setting of Victorian London. Stevenson seems to make a comment not only about the dualism present in every individual but also in society as a whole, where the aristocracy that superficially was genteel and refined, had dark secrets to hide behind the high walls of the mansions in which they lived” (Singh & Chakrabarti 222). The public in this time were very proper in presenting themselves in society and providing facades to hide (Hyde)/shadow their true intentions. Stevenson must have been rather tired of the falsities that many had about themselves, he didn’t create this story to just be a take on human nature but also a satirical piece that damned everyone around him.