Jekyll & Hyde

ACT ONE

It is London, around the year 1885, and the events of the musical have recently passed. Dr. Jekyll’s lawyer, John Utterson, and Sir Danvers Carew, Jekyll’s future father-in-law, explain that the audience will be taken back in time as they recall the case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

The story opens in the dismal ward of a mental hospital, where Jekyll is gazing intently at a comatose old man strapped to a bed—his father. He assures him that he will find a way to help him overcome his mental illness (“Lost in the Darkness”), explaining that he has been working on a formula that will separate the “evil” causing the illness from the “good” in his father’s mind (“I Need to Know”).

Jekyll exits, in anguish and contemplation, onto the London street, where the motley crowd sings of the upright “Façade” that everyone puts on to hide their true, often more perverse selves. The scene moves to the meeting of the St. Jude’s Hospital Board of Governors, presided over by Simon Stride.