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Jekyll & Hyde
Music by Frank Wildhorn Lyrics by Steve Cuden Book by Leslie Bricusse Thingamajig Theatre Company, 2019 Director/Choreographer: Melissa Firlit Music Director: Boni McIntyre Additional Choreography: Pia Wyatt Set Designer: Matthew D. McCarren Costume Designer: Kate Mott Sound Designer: Michaela Pietrinferno Prod. Stage Manager: Samantha Rohr Photography by Elaine Wong. This production was performed in repertory with a shared lighting plot with two other productions, Ring of Fire and Mamma Mia. A musical based on the original novella by Robert Louis Stevenson, Jekyll & Hyde presents itself as a dark brooding work steeped in gothic horror. Dr. Henry Jekyll seeks to create a medicine that can separate good from evil in a human being. But when the Board of Governors of St. Jude's Hospital denies him support, he realizes that he must test the concoction upon himself. In doing so, he unleashes Edward Hyde onto London -- a sadistic beast of a man who goes on a calculated murder spree against every member of the Board that denied him legitimacy. Jekyll struggles to separate Hyde's actions from his own conscience, and works both to assuage his guilt and to excise Hyde for good.
The world of this production was heavily influenced by dieselpunk, working with the motifs of industrialism and the scientific revolution. It examined the many juxtapositions in the musical of good versus evil, flesh versus metal, the needs of the body versus the discipline of the mind. The goal of the lighting design was to highlight this inherent duality of man's nature using heavily saturated colours, bold textures, and deliberate shadows to carve the dimension of the human body. As well, the gentle warmth of the incandescent chandeliers against the bold colour of the LED lights alludes to the contrast between the natural and the mechanical. |
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