\'Jekyll & Hyde\' Revival Sets Spring Broadway Opening

August 28, 2012, 11:49 am

By PATRICK HEALY

Add the Frank Wildhorn musical “Jekyll & Hyde” to the list of shows being revived on Broadway not that long after their last appearance there.

A 25-week national tour of “Jekyll & Hyde” will begin this fall and then come to the Richard Rodgers Theater in New York in April 2013, according to a spokeswoman for the revival, confirming a Twitter post on Monday by the production's star, Tony Award nominee Constantine Maroulis (“Rock of Ages”).

Mr. Maroulis will play the title characters. The spokeswoman had no additional details on Tuesday.

“Jekyll & Hyde,” based on the Robert Louis Stevenson novella, is one of the more commercially successful shows by Mr. Wildhorn, a composer and p op song writer who has had several flops on Broadway (most recently “Bonnie & Clyde,” “Wonderland,” and “Dracula”). The original Broadway production of “Jekyll & Hyde” opened in April 1997 and ran for nearly four years, a respectable stretch (the original Broadway production of “Evita” ran about as long). But ticket sales were not strong enough for the show to turn a profit on Broadway; the musical has since gone on to be a moneymaker in overseas productions.

“Jekyll & Hyde” is one of several Broadway revivals that are coming not long after earlier productions of the shows; the plays “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” “Glengarry Glen Ross,” and “Cyrano de Bergerac” are all being staged on Broadway this fall, only a few years after their last outings there.

As for the Broadway marketplace for musicals in the 2012-13 theater season, several of the announced shows feature family-oriented plots about growing up (“Annie,” “Mati lda,” “Cinderella,” “A Christmas Story,” “Elf”). “Jekyll & Hyde” is more fantastical, by contrast, with a mix of romance and tragedy.

The show has music by Mr. Wildhorn and a book and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse. The director of the production is Jeff Calhoun, a recent Tony nominee for “Newsies the Musical.”