Runaway Stage Production's "Jekyll and Hyde" (or, Tev Mixes Some New Meds And Goes Feral)

Left: Tev Ditter as Dr. Jekyll (and his alter ego Edward Hyde).


Wonderful new show at RSP's 24th Street Theater!

"Jekyll and Hyde" starts in a strained place - Dr. Jekyll makes an appeal for research support to his hospital's Board of Governors, and they turn him down flat. The idealistic Dr. Jekyll is impatient with the Board's failure to recognize the duality of good and evil in human nature, and the possibility of using medications to elicit one from the other. The Board, to its great and everlasting credit, sees ethical and moral dilemmas in Dr. Jekyll's proposed research. The Board, however, has dilemmas of its own, chiefly being its own hypocritical nature - do as we say, not as we do.

Because the show starts off where most 19th Century theatricals end, in a highly idealistic, sharply-delineated, even arid zone of moral clarity, the show moves creakily forward at first. The slow, cerebral pace is a vice of most new Broadway (post-1975) shows - RSP is not at fault here. The show is lit up, however, by some excellent songs, like "Facade", and "Take Me As I Am", featuring gorgeous singing by Tev Ditter in a duet with the wonderful Norma-Jean Russell, who plays Dr. Jekyll's caring fiancee, Emma. But the show's pace is slow until......

Left: Amber Jean Moore Lazard as Lucy


....until the beautiful and sexy Amber Jean Moore, together with the sexy ensemble, take the stage in "Bring On The Men".

Amber had some wonderful songs to sing, including the power ballad "A New Life".

The unusually-capable ensemble seemed unusually well-rehearsed. Choreographer Pam Kay Lourentzos has (once-again) done a very good job! Notable standouts include Joshua James as the evil Spider, Megan Sandoval as Nellie, and Jonathan Blum as Simon Stride. Really, just a wonderfully lithe group of people!

Once Tev had started displaying his drug-induced bipolar identity issues, the show really began to rocket forward. Tev has twenty (good grief, twenty!) songs to sing in this show, including the stellar "This Is The Moment". Tev is singing just about the best he ever has, so all you Tev Ditter fans, take note and check out this show!

Left: Karen Day as Lady Beaconsfield (check out her bling!)


My understanding before the show (from talking with Karen Day several weeks before the show) was that the hospital's Board of Governors was supposed to be quite evil. Actually, I liked the Board of Governors. I mean, when the hypocritical Board member, the Bishop of Basingstoke (Patrick Coughenour) was enticed by saucy Nellie (Megan Sandoval), I understood. Wouldn't you get enticed too? It was exceedingly cruel of Edward Hyde to get all judgmental and go medieval on the Bishop, when he was just doing what comes naturally, dontcha think?







Left: Bill Trainor as Sir Danvers Carew.


Microphone and feedback issues were mercifully few in this show - another indication of an unusually well-rehearsed cast.

The only jarring note in the show was that the prerecorded voice instructing the audience to turn off its cell phones sounded remarkably like the introductory narration to the show, and so instead of an instruction to the audience not to take flash photos, as I expected, I heard instead a somber commentary of the base evil lurking in the human soul.









Left: Frank Hardin as General Lord Glossop.

I liked Michael Jones as Dr. Jekyll's loyal friend, confidant (and solicitor, as he is in real life), Gabriel John Utterson. So sad he has to resolve the unresolvable!

Robert Louis Stevenson's novel "Jekyll and Hyde" has many similarities to its fellow gothic classic, Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein."

The 19th-Century was the first to really encounter, and grapple with, the scourge of addictive, mind-altering drugs. We still haven't conquered that dark corner of the human psyche.

On a scarcely-relevant note, I am reminded of Amy Winehouse's refrain (which may as well be Dr. Jekyll's refrain):

They tried to make me go to rehab, I said 'no, no, no'
Yes I've been black but when I come back you'll know know know
I ain't got the time and if my daddy thinks I'm fine
He's tried to make me go to rehab, I won't go go go