Language and It's Fruits

On April 9th, I saw Hanover High School in Pennsylvania perform Jekyll and

Hyde. The musical was focused on the story of Dr. Jekyll's, a renowned scientist

working to find a cure for insanity, transformation into Mr. Hyde, an immoral

lecherous beast, the purest form of evil within a person.

The musical had a lot of strong points. The three main characters, Jekyll, Lucy

and Emma all had wonderful, strong voices. Lucy's microphone was terrible, yet

the audience was able to hear her voice, despite the loud crack that the microphone

made every few seconds. The ensemble kept in time with the music and in the song

"Murder, Murder" accented the first syllable and had good sound control. Lucy and

Emma had a duet in the song "In His Eyes" in which they harmonized well and

kept the tempo despite one girl singing one verse, and the other singing another.

The cast usually had a lot of energy behind their voices in each song.

The minor characters in the musical had poor vocal quality. In the song "Pursue

the Truth", the character Utterson was flat for portions of the song, and had no

energy behind his voice. In "Board of Governors", the 5 voices of the governors

were good, but the tenor voice overtook the rest of the voices. I could barely hear

the female governor, and their voices were out of sync when they were supposed to

be one big, booming voice.

My favorite song in the musical was "I Need to Know". Dr. Jekyll sang with a

lot of emotion and the song set up the premise for the musical. It set the mood for

the play.

Jekyll and Hyde was one of the better plays I've seen from high schoolers. The

leads were fantastic, with a loud ensemble to back them up. The minor characters

needed some help with pitch, but were not terrible. I would highly recommend this

play.