chimeracostumes

A night at the theater

Added 2022-11-11 17:16:05 +0000 UTC

Last night my friend took me (and a group) to see a production of jekyll & hyde the musical at a local theater where a friend of hers works. They did it in a steampunk theme, and encouraged the audience to dress up.

Being that it was a small theater, I had small expectations and was prepared to be supportive of an admirable effort from a local cast with a presumably somewhat limited budget.

I was BLOWN AWAY by the quality of the production! I've seen a lot (a LOT) of shows in my day and to be brutally honest Im kind of picky (which is why i make an effort to be supportive no matter what - especially with respect to budget limitations).

The lead singer (jekyll/hyde) was a young guy just out of college and holy SHIT he was good. His performance of "Confrontation" was so excellent that in the car on the way home i listened to the "official" cast recordings again to compare his work to theirs and frankly - i think he was better. The studio album uses overlapping recordings of the same singer to acheive the split personality effect, which is definitely cool, but Ryan did something I think is better: he managed to actually sing both parts, live, using only his body language and the cool lighting to convey the rift within.

Is my description confusing? Think of that scene in LOTR where andy serkis does both sides of gollum's conversation with himself. Then imagine that on stage with NO video editing to aid the cuts back and forth. THEN imagine that it's being sung. Yeah. That's how good this kid was.