This month, Oxford Playhouse are pleased to welcome back the University of Oxford students to the Main Stage. Broken Wheel Productions will stage a brand-new production of Frank Wildhorn and Leslie Bricusse’s Tony award-nominated musical Jekyll & Hyde, based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic story.
Inspired by the well-known gothic thriller, Jekyll and Hyde explores the inner duality of good and evil. Broken Wheel’s electrifying new adaptation of the musical promises to bring the shock and awe of the original novel to a modern audience.
We spoke to the co-directors of Broken Wheel’s production, Jak Spencer and Thomas Freeman, to find out more ahead of its run at Oxford Playhouse from Wednesday 26 February to Saturday 1 March.
What inspired you to choose Jekyll & Hyde for this year’s production?
TF: Jak and I have been in love with the musical for many years as a result of its excellent soundtrack and raw emotion that comes through in every number. The show is, at its heart, very fun – it is simultaneously an exciting, action-packed thriller, a heartbreaking love story, and an interesting exploration of Victorian society that remains relevant to our own. As a result, we feared a student production wouldn’t be able to achieve the necessary scale that a production would require. When the opportunity arose for us to put on a show at Oxford Playhouse, we jumped at the chance, being lucky enough to have access to such a talented pool of technicians, musicians and performers that would be able to make this show a reality.
How do you think the musical’s exploration of duality resonate now with a modern audience?
TF: Despite the events of the musical taking place in the shadowy streets of Victorian London, I think the show’s ‘big idea’ of the duality of man – the ‘façade’ – is perhaps as important (if not even more so) as it has ever been before. We still live in a world where everybody puts up a shiny, more attractive version of themselves for the rest of the world to see, but also in a world where misinformation runs rampant over Facebook, and entire PR teams run world figures’ Twitter accounts. I think it’s more important than ever to encourage people to try to look past this ‘façade’ at the potentially less attractive truth underneath.
You mentioned the need for a set that is both “stark and opulent.” Could you elaborate on how the set design reflects the contrasting themes of good and evil within the story?
JS: Our production has a wealth of technical talent to tap into, which we plan to do to a great degree. The set design by the incredible Ted Fussell, to avoid giving too much away, makes great use of the OP’s fly rigs to conceal and reveal certain aspects. Our stage should feel like it has layers, with a skeleton that exposes the true natures of society, then dressed up in a “façade”. We play around extensively with the shape of the stage space and how we can draw the audience’s eyes to specific areas, facilitating (hopefully) very slick and clean transitions. The set and lighting teams are working together extensively to achieve this effect.
How did you approach working with such a large live orchestra and ensure the music enhanced the emotional impact of the narrative?
TF: The short answer is with a great deal of trust and awe in our fantastic musical director, Iris Burlacu. On top of her incredibly complicated task of bringing an 18-piece band together, she has been hard at work rehearsing with our cast to ensure musical excellence across the board. In general, the musical as a whole is characterised by its particularly powerful pop-rock score, with our actors belting their hearts out to do the various emotional ballads justice. The scale of this musical demands to be filled, and as the emotion of each number increases, the extent to which such a large orchestra can heighten that emotion amazes and baffles me to this day.
What challenges did you face while balancing the demands of such a complex production with a student cast and crew, and how did you overcome them?
JS: There’s no question that this is a massive production, we already have a company of over 75 people, and we expect this to grow in the coming weeks. The usual challenges of scheduling and timetabling will never cease. Many shows choose to insulate their departments, we instead are very interconnected, which means there are often many voices and thoughts flying around in meetings that need sorting through and focusing. Our wonderful team of PMs and Directors (both technical and the boring kind like me and Tom) have the important job of ensuring everyone is heard and theories become reality efficiently. It’s a good job we’re all good friends!
Were there any unique directorial choices or creative interpretations you introduced to make this adaptation stand out from previous productions?
TF: I think the biggest issue we had with the script was that because it is inevitably very focused on Jekyll’s personality changing and the emotions that he goes through, the other characters can often get overlooked. It can be a very dark and, if not done carefully, occasionally slow show. Luckily for our eager audience, Jak and I have been working to balance this by exaggerating the darker scenes with a more expressionistic approach, and at the same time finding some oft-overlooked moments to lighten things up and explore the relationships between the characters that we should, by the end of the show, have grown to love. With regard to other unique choices, we’ll have to keep a few things up our sleeve…
What do you hope the audience will take away from this performance, both in terms of the story’s message and the artistic experience?
JS: Firstly, the artistic experience should be everything but understated, this is intended to be big, bold, and bombastic. Aside from the technical aspects of the show, our cast is simply wonderful to work with, they’re having a lot of fun and we hope the audience get that impression too. As for the story’s message, as much as it is a story of hubris, balance, and duality, the really interesting parts lie in the relationships between the characters. How do people act and react in different company? How does this reflect modern society? How far would we go for our loved ones? Many of these themes are quite blunt, others are more subtle, it is our job as directors to facilitate the cast to get these messages across, whilst providing a wonderful night of entertainment for our audience.