Theatre review: Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical

IN HIS 1884 novella, Robert Louis Stevenson is careful not to spell out what wicked deeds the sinister Mr Hyde performs. By leaving it to the reader's imagination, he lets us see our own darker side in his transgressions.

One thing most of us don't imagine is that, set free from Jekyll's laboratory, Hyde would trip up an old lady, burst some balloons and shove an ice-cream in a boy's face. In this musical adaptation by Leslie Bricusse and Frank Wildhorn, it's as if he has released his inner Dennis the Menace. For no logical reason, he then swings to the opposite extreme and becomes a serial killer who could put Sweeney Todd to shame.

That means it ceases to be a story of everyday repression to become one of gratuitous violence. This, despite a promising start in which Jekyll is presented as a Richard Dawkins figure, baiting a reactionary society that prefers tittle-tattle to rational thought and hypocrisy to the scientific method. It's an idea that soon gets forgotten about.

In the lead roles (one with hair up, the other with hair down), Marti Pellow sings beautifully, speaks his lines in a nearly-RP whisper and moves as if guided by remote control. In a large cast, Sabrina Carter stands out as the prostitute whom Jekyll wants to rescue and Hyde wants to destroy. But despite the slick staging, it's a musical in which even the better songs tend to spin out the story and avoid its double-edged heart.