Melody Lane Performing Arts Center is staging a very special production of the gothic horror "Jekyll & Hyde the Musical" at the Heights Center for one weekend only—June 14th through the 16th.
“Our most talented Southwest Florida high schoolers and college students are going to be performing for you what you would see on Broadway or in a national tour,” touts Melody Lane Co-Director Dana Alvarez.
But she says there’s another reason why area theater-goers don’t want to miss this production.
“We have had the extreme privilege to have an original cast member who performed this show over 2,000 times on Broadway, Raymond Jaramillo McLeod, and he has been our music director and he is also in the show as Sir Danvers Carew," Alvarez said.
“I’m playing a different character than I did on Broadway,” McLeod interjects. “I played Simon Stride and here I’m doing Sir Danvers Carew because now I’m old. That’s right. I’m old.”
McLeod’s tutelage is paying huge dividends that will trickle down to the audiences who take in the show.
“He’s approaching things from a very character and story-driven type of education," Alvarez said. "So, helping the students not just sing well and have good vocal technique, but really understand the meaning behind the words, what was going on in each scene and helping them to truly connect with the material. As a result, the audience is going to be fully emerged in this classic tale of good and evil," Alvarez said.
McLeod has been impressed by how well Melody Lane’s youthful cast has mastered Jekyll & Hyde’s complex musical score.
“Some of the young kids in this show are really great … and it’s not an easy score,” McLeod said. “Frank Wildhorn wrote this score while he was in college and it’s his most successful show on Broadway. And there’s some complex stuff in there, the kids here are picking it up really well and singing the beep out of it.”
Among Wildhorn’s memorable scores, “This is the Moment” is one of the show’s most performed numbers.
“That was like a big ice skating song before the musical became really popular, and now I think everybody sings it,” McLeod said. "Everybody on earth has had a chance to sing ‘This is the Moment.’ It’s a great song. It builds really well. ... Will does a great job singing it too.”
Will is Will Thomas, a student from northeast Georgia who heard about the show on Instagram and sent Alvarez an audition reel.
“It’s been really neat to have someone come from out of town specifically for this show,” Alvarez said. “He actually won Best Actor at the Georgia State Thespians.”
Adriana Farrugia and Aubrey Barnhouse are two other established phenoms in the Jekyll & Hyde cast. They play Emma Carew and Lucy Harris. In addition to beautiful solos, they combine for a duet titled “In His Eyes.”
“What a beautiful piece of music that is,” McLeod said. “On Broadway, Linda Eder and Christiane Nole sang that thing, and it just brought the house down every night. It’s so haunting and so beautiful.”
McLeod predicts that Farrugia and Barnhouse will do likewise during this production of "Jekyll & Hyde the Musical."
But one of McLeod’s favorites from the Wildhorn score is the opening number in Act II, “Murder Murder.” In this high-octane 8½ minute scene, Edward Hyde exacts revenge on members of the Board of Governors who rejected Henry Jekyll’s request to conduct his experiments on a human subject.
“Throughout ‘Murder Murder,’ he kills them off one by one through the song," McLeod said. "Hence the title, ‘Murder Murder.’"
Performances of "Jekyll & Hyde the Musical" run Friday, June 14 through Sunday June 16, 2024.
To read more stories about the arts in Southwest Florida visit Tom Hall's website: SWFL Art in the News.
Spotlight on the Arts for WGCU is funded in part by Naomi Bloom, Jay & Toshiko Tompkins, and Julie & Phil Wade.
Script and audio engineered and produced by WGCU's Tara Calligan.
MORE INFORMATION:
- Go here for play dates, times and a full cast list.
- Raymond Jarmillo McLeod was the original Simon Stride in Jekyll & Hyde on Broadway. He performed the role 2,150 times!
- McLeod earned his MFA at the University of Texas. In addition to Jekyll & Hyde, he performed on Broadway in Wonderful Town, Wild Party, South Pacific, Dance of the Vampires On the 20th Century and Tale of Two Cities. He was also in the national tours of Evita, Oklahoma and Jekyll & Hyde.
- You will hear McLeod’s voice in the movie soundtracks of Jurassic Park, Indecent Proposal, The Abyss, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Little Mermaid, Pocahontas, Nightmare Before Christmas, Tom & Jerry and Sebastian’s singing voice in Little Mermaid. He is “the voice” of JD Wentworth, Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion.
- For the musical, Leslie Bricusse and Frank Wildhorn re-imagined Robert Louise Stevenson’s 1886 gothic horror of the same name.
- As in the novel, the story begins with Dr. Henry Jekyll’s quest to cure his ailing father’s mental illness by separating “good” from “evil” in the human personality. But in the effort, the good doctor inadvertently creates an alternate personality of pure evil dubbed Mr. Hyde. As Hyde wreaks murderous havoc on the city of London, Jekyll’s fiancée Emma grows increasingly fearful for her betrothed. Struggling to control Hyde before he takes over for good, Jekyll must race to find a cure for the demon he has created in his own mind.
- When the musical premiered in 1990, it featured artful physicality, an operatic style reminiscent of Phantom of the Opera and Sweeney Todd, intricate dance choreography and the unforgettable break-out pop rock hit “This is the Moment,” poignant ballad “No One Knows Who I Am” and heartbreaking beautiful solo “Someone Like You.”
- Jekyll & Hyde enjoyed a four-year run on Broadway that began in 1997 and included 1,543 performances at Plymouth Theatre. Since then, numerous productions in various languages have since been staged across the globe, including two subsequent North American tours, two tours in the United Kingdom, a concert version, a revamped U.S. tour in 2012, a 2013 Broadway revival featuring Constantine Maroulis, and an Australian concert version in 2019.