History YMMV / JekyllAndHyde

----

!! The Musical

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Sit down for a moment and think about this musical's take on Hyde. He still looks like Jekyll, just with loose hair and an evil grin. He brutally murders the people that pissed Jekyll off, and he rapes the woman Jekyll was attracted to but didn't dare become involved with because of the engagement to Emma, whom he later assaults at the wedding. This show makes it easier than almost any other version of the story to interpret Hyde as simply a name Jekyll gives his repressed depravity.
** That isn't an alternative interpretation, it's the canon one. In the source story, Jekyll straight up explains that that freedom is why he makes the potion, and it's why he continues to imbibe it. Even in the musical, Jekyll states that the potion makes him feel "twice as alive and tenfold more wicked, which intoxicates and delights me like wine." He's addicted to the freedom, and keeps up with it, not attempting to stop until his actions have gone well past the point of being unforgivable.

* FridgeHorror: In the script, ''Jekyll'' is hiding in the darkness in Lucy's room. After he calls out to her, Hyde takes control, leading to Lucy's murder. Jekyll was so close to bidding Lucy goodbye without incident...
** Hyde even says, to Lucy's "For a moment I thought it was someone else," "For a moment, it almost was."
* RomanticPlotTumor: A huge percent of the songs and scenes in the musical are just the two love interests singing about being in love. They're good songs, but still. It takes about an hour into the musical for Hyde to even show up.
* StrawmanHasAPoint: As Peter Filichia notes in his book ''Let's Put on a Musical!'', the board members' unwillingness to sanction Jekyll's work is actually understandable. Although they're all portrayed as close-minded hypocrites, and if they had said yes he might have been able to better control the experiment, it's completely unethical to perform an experimental, possibly dangerous, treatment on an asylum patient (as he requested)--such a subject, among other things, would be unable to provide informed consent.

* TearJerker: The song "A New Life" is pretty depressing enough as it is, much more so when you know what's about to happen afterwards.
** In one production the Spider takes the letter from her and called her a whore directly before the song (which began with her sobbing).
** The very first song, "Lost in the Darkness", qualifies, too, as Jekyll is visiting his catatonic father in the madhouse and promises him to find a cure, wishing him goodnight in a tender voice in the end.
** The very beginning of "Confrontation," which either reprises "Lost in the Darkness" or has Jekyll muse on whether he's a good man or a madman and how there's such a fine line between good and bad.

** Hyde even says, to Lucy's 'For a moment I thought it was someone else', 'For a moment, it almost was'.
* JerkassHasAPoint: As with StrawmanHasAPoint below, we already have ample reason to dislike Simon by the time he voices his own objections to Jekyll's proposed experiment, but he has a point that Henry's well-intentioned goals don't change the fact his intended method of using personality-altering drugs on another human being in an attempt to remove evil from them is ''incredibly'' unethical from a medical standpoint. It can be argued that since Jekyll has the measure of what a jackass Simon is and the fact he brings this up more to humiliate Jekyll than anything else, Jekyll inadvertently ignores the realization his experiment really ''is'' impossible to condone because the people shooting him down are such jerks about it.
* MurderTheHypotenuse: The love triangle is broken when Hyde kills Lucy. However, since Jekyll loves Emma and Lucy loves Jekyll and Hyde loves Lucy, it's a little complicated.

** The very first song, "Lost in the darkness", qualifies, too, as Jekyll is visiting his catatonic father in the madhouse and promises him to find a cure, wishing him good-night in a tender voice in the end.

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Sit down for a moment and think about this musical's take on Hyde. He still looks like Jekyll, just with loose hair and an evil grin. He brutally murders the people that pissed Jekyll off, and he rapes the woman Jekyll was attracted to but didn't dare become involved with because of the engagement to Emma, whom he later assaults at the wedding. For being a piece of romantic musical fluff, this show makes it easier than almost any other version of the story to interpret Hyde as simply a name Jekyll gives his repressed depravity. Congratulations, Frank Wildhorn, you have potentially beaten [[TheLeagueOfExtraordinaryGentlemen Alan]] freaking [[Creator/AlanMoore Moore]] at being DarkerAndEdgier.

* CreatorsPet: Lucy gets an unusual amount of songs despite being TheNotLoveInterest in most revisions of the show, (she always has an unrequited infatuation with Henry, but it's rarely reciprocated in any production). The simplest explanation is that the character was written with Linda Eder in mind... who was dating (and later married!) writer/composer Frank Wildhorn at the time.
** Indeed, most of Lucy's cut songs ended up on Eder's solo albums and cabaret tour after she left the Broadway Production.

** In one production The Spider took the letter from her and called her a whore directly before the song (which began with her sobbing). Tears.
** The very first song, "Lost in the darkness", qualifies, too, as Jekyll is visiting his catatonic father in the madhouse and promises him to find the cure, wishing him good-night in a tender voice in the end.

* WTHCastingAgency: And ''how!'' Among the castings are theatre royalty [[Theatre/LesMiserables Colm Wilkinson]] and [[ThePhantomOfTheOpera Steve Barton,]] weird additions like Creator/DavidHasselhoff and [[SkidRow Sebastian Bach(?!?),]] and perhaps most infamously ''[[IronChef Takashi Kaga!]]'' And that's just for the character of Henry Jekyll/Edward Hyde!
** Creator/DavidHasselhoff was the final Jekyll/Hyde in the show's Broadway run (the ads had him noting "This ain't no [[Main/{{Baywatch}} day at the beach]]"). One of the performances was videotaped and released on [=DVD=]. Some consider his performance to be NarmCharm of the purest kind, though it's clear that, skills aside, he certainly put his all into the role.

* JerkassHasAPoint: As with StrawmanHasAPoint below, we already have ample reason to dislike Simon by the time he voices his own objections to Jekyll's proposed experiment, but he has a point that Henry's well-intentioned goals don't change the fact his intended method of using personality-altering drugs on another human being in an attempt to remove evil from them is ''incredibly'' unethical from a medical standpoint. It can be argued that since Jekyll has the measure of what a jackass Simon is and the fact he brings this up more to humiliate Jekyll than anything else, Jekyll inadvertently ignores the realization his experiment really ''is'' impossible to condone because the people shooting him down are such jerks about it.

* CrowningMusicOfAwesome: "This Is The Moment"
** "Alive" as well.

** "Confrontation" is kind of a meta-example for the actor, because to act and sing a ridiculously difficult song while switching between two completely different personalities every five seconds is an automatic CMOA.

* BreakawayPopHit: "This is the Moment" in the 90s.

* RomanticPlotTumor: Hoo boy... A huge percent of the songs and scenes in the musical are just the two love interests singing about being in love, they're good songs, but still.
* StrawmanHasAPoint: As Peter Filichia notes in his book ''Let's Put on a Musical!'', the board members' unwillingness to sanction Jekyll's work is actually understandable.
** It's possibly the biggest tragedy in the show, that the initial antagonists are right, and the hero is wrong.
*** However, if the Governors had allowed Jekyll to test his theories on a human subject, perhaps under controlled conditions he could have succeeded.

** I saw a production where The Spider took the letter from her and called her a whore directly before the song (which began with her sobbing). Tears.
** One could argue that the very first song, "Lost in the darkness", qualifies, too, as Jekyll is visiting his catatonic father in the madhouse and promises him to find the cure, wishing him good-night in a tender voice in the end.
* WhatAnIdiot: If Lucy hadn't dragged her heels and sung "A New Life", she might not have been killed!
** Well it was the middle of the night, I doubt any train tickets would be available to purchase at that exact moment anyways.
** She was packing while she sang it. If Bricusse and Wildhorn had cut that song, Hyde probably still would've stormed in while she was cramming her bags.

** Many of Jekyll's songs are just pure [[CrowningMusicOfAwesome]] .

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Sit down for a moment and think about this musical's take on Hyde. He still looks like Jekyll, just with loose hair and an evil grin. He brutally murders the people that pissed Jekyll off, and he rapes the woman Jekyll was attracted to but didn't dare become involved with because of the engagement to Emma, whom he later assaults at the wedding. For being a piece of romantic musical fluff, this show makes it easier than almost any other version of the story to interpret Hyde as simply a name Jekyll gives his repressed depravity. Congratulations, Frank Wildhorn, you have potentially beaten [[TheLeagueOfExtraordinaryGentlemen Alan]] freaking [[AlanMoore Moore]] at being DarkerAndEdgier.

* CompleteMonster: Hyde manages to come across as this even when he only kills jerks.

** "Confrontation."

** Creator/DavidHasselhoff was the final Jekyll/Hyde in the show's Broadway run (the ads had him noting "This ain't no [[Main/{{Baywatch}} day at the beach]]"). One of the performances was videotaped and released on [=DVD=]. Some consider his performance to be NarmCharm, and its clear that, skills aside, he's certainly put his all into the role.

* FauxAffablyEvil: Hyde has a few nice lines.

* WTHCastingAgency: And ''how!'' Among the castings are theatre royalty [[LesMiserables Colm Wilkinson]] and [[ThePhantomOfTheOpera Steve Barton,]] weird additions like Creator/DavidHasselhoff and [[SkidRow Sebastian Bach(?!?),]] and perhaps most infamously ''[[IronChef Takashi Kaga!]]'' And that's just for the character of Henry Jekyll/Edward Hyde!

* TearJerker: The song "A new life" is pretty depressing enough as it is, much more so when you know what's about to happen afterwards.

** Creator/DavidHasselhoff was the final Jekyll/Hyde in the show's Broadway run (the ads had him noting "This ain't no [[Main/{{Baywatch}} day at the beach]]"). One of the performances was videotaped and released on [=DVD=]. Some consider his performance to be NarmCharm.

* WTHCastingAgency: And ''how!'' Among the castings are theatre royalty [[LesMiserables Colm Wilkinson]] and [[ThePhantomOfTheOpera Steve Barton,]] weird additions like DavidHasselhoff and [[SkidRow Sebastian Bach(?!?),]] and perhaps most infamously ''[[IronChef Takashi Kaga!]]'' And that's just for the character of Henry Jekyll/Edward Hyde!
** DavidHasselhoff was the final Jekyll/Hyde in the show's Broadway run (the ads had him noting "This ain't no [[Main/{{Baywatch}} day at the beach]]"). One of the performances was videotaped and released on [=DVD=]. Some consider his performance to be NarmCharm.

* EpicSong: "Facade"

** That isn't an alternative interpretation, it's the canon one. In the source story, Jekyll straight up explains that that freedom is why he makes the potion, and it's why he continues to imbibe it. Even in the musical, Jekyll states that the potion makes him feel "twice as alive and tenfold more wicked, which intoxicates and delights me like wine." He's addicted to the freedom, and keeps up with it, not attempting to stop until his actions have become unforgivable.

** It doesn't help that WordOfGod for the original story said that the concoction that made him a monster was, in fact, cocaine.

* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: Sit down for a moment and think about this musical's take on Hyde. He still looks like Jekyll, just with loose hair and an evil grin. He brutally murders the people that pissed Jekyll off, and he rapes the woman Jekyll was attracted to but didn't dare become involved with because of the engagement to Emma, whom he later assaults at the wedding. For being a piece of romantic musical fluff, this show makes it easier than almost any other version of the story to interpret Hyde as simply a name Jekyll gives his repressed depravity. Congratulations, Frank Wildhorn, you have potentially beaten [[TheLeagueOfExtraordinaryGentlemen Alan]] freaking [[AlanMoore Moore]] at being DarkerAndEdgier.