Jeckyll and Hyde The Musical

I have seen a couple of previous productions of Jekyll & Hyde and to be honest, was not therefore looking forward to seeing another by any company.  However, after the experience this week with BMTG I suddenly realise all that was missing from those other productions and what a great show J&H can be when injected with a million volts of passion, creativity, performance quality, movement, costuming, effective minimal set and inventive deaths prepared with great precision scattered through the night.

After many great performances on-stage, this was Beth Yearsley's first step into role of Director of a full on musical production. So avoiding the ‘you would never know’ cliché, she did an excellent job of empowering her creative team to do what they can do best and focussed on bringing all those strands together into something that was indeed greater than the sum of the many brilliant parts.

Looking at those ‘parts’ in no particular order – first and foremost you have attitude, of both the Principals and Ensemble members alike.   Beth had clearly communicated her vision to every cast and crew member and they had taken this vision and whacked it out of the park.  Choreography from Jodie was excellent and focused, acting was not just something you did to get from one song to another but each character understood their story arc and focussed on this in song and libretto alike. So much so that when musical numbers came they were natural and drove the story forward rather than interrupting it.  

The transformation of Jekyll to Hyde has often provided too much of a temptation for overacting or over technical pyrotechnics – but Beth and her lighting/costuming team got this exactly right throughout the night as did George Mercer.  

It’s hard to communicate just how strong the cast of this production were, both individually and in the way they all pulled for each other.  George Mercer (Jeckyll & Hyde), Clair Rybicki (Emma Carew), Lily Taylor-Ward (Lucy Harris), Abby Riddell (Spider) with John Henson, Rob Charles and Chris Brian and a superb supporting team of performers delivered a collective performance that at times left me open mouthed at what I was seeing in a small theatre in Long Eaton that would, speaking from experience, have graced the stage at the RSC.

One critical factor in this mix was the vocal performances and supporting orchestration and sound design. Sam and Andrea had driven the very best from their talented performers with highlights including “Murder, Murder”, “His Work and Nothing More”, “Sympathy Tenderness” running into “Someone like You” and, of course, “This is the Moment”.

Last but by no means least the atmosphere was completed by the use of a very simple but very effective set that focussed the action, costuming that was steam punk inspired, but very much BMTG delivered thanks to the hours of work and inspiration of Mina Machin. The lighting – which provided a very bloody backdrop and the staging of the deaths of the various characters during the production which brought that final touch of professionalism to the production.

An excellent night from an excellent Company!

Martin Holtom

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