“Jekyll & Hyde” opens on Broadway this week as the rarest of modern musicals: a show with built-in groupies. In part, that devotion comes from “J&H’s” taste for middlebrow melodrama–sort of “The Phantom of the Opera” with all the sex and violence that the British couldn’t stomach. But the big seller has been the music, written over the last seven years by Broadway novice Frank Wildhorn with lyrics by veteran Leslie Bricusse (“Victor/Victoria”). “Jekyll’s” gushy, VH1-ready ballads have been featured on Super Bowl and Olympic telecasts, at the 1996 Democratic National Convention and on two major-label cast albums (with more than 300,000 total units sold). And they’ve become a staple of Miss America contestants year after year. In 1992 alone, three of the top five finishers–including the winner, Leanza Cornett–sang a “J&H” number. Most musicals can’t buy that kind of attention. Unfortunately, Cornett went on “Live With Regis and Kathie Lee” and thanked Andrew Lloyd Webber for the nice music. Some Jekkies still haven’t forgiven her.
But Wildhorn has. He has already made a small fortune from the albums and the licensing of “Jekyll” songs. A pop-song writer by trade–his biggest hit was Whitney Houston’s “Where Do Broken Hearts Go?” in 1988–he started working on the show as a USC undergraduate. In 1990, it debuted in Houston to ticket-scalping acclaim, both for songs like “This Is the Moment” and for Eder, a Streisand sound-alike and former “Star Search” champion. Then the show went through seven years of rewrites, restaging and ineffectual producers. Such tribulations have sunk many shows, but this may be the first one saved by a beauty pageant. “So many times when this show had tough times, it was the exploitation of the music that kept the show alive,” Wildhorn says. “It had a built-in audience.”
It remains to be seen if “J&H” can survive the monster that is New York, even with a slick, $6.2 million production and $3 million in advance sales. Critics on the road knocked the show’s Gothic overkill and clunky integration of the big songs into the familiar story. The current director, Robin Phillips, a Royal Shakespeare Company alum, has radically restaged the show, setting it in a blood-red box, streamlining the plot, cutting songs. The Jekkies’ e-mailed gossip and critiques can hardly keep up. Of course, everyone connected with the show will be disappointed if it stumbles now, but Broadway is almost superfluous. Productions are in the works for Germany, Belgium and Australia. Wildhorn’s second Broadway show, “The Scarlet Pimpernel,” opens in November. And if all else fails, there’s always another Miss America pageant.
