EVERETT — Musical theater fans: You have one night to see a local performance of this show.
The national touring company of “Jekyll &Hyde” is on stage at 7 p.m. Jan. 25 at Xfinity Arena.
The musical, with its award-nominated score and lyrics by Frank Wildhorn and Leslie Bricusse, is based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic story “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” about a man with split personalities.
Laura Helm, who plays Lucy Harris in the show, took time to talk about the production before boarding the tour bus in Arizona this past week.
Helm, 24, earned her fine arts degree in musical theater at the Hartt School in Connecticut. This is her first professional national tour.
“We started the tour in September in Minnesota,” she said. “We’re excited to visit Everett because we understand the Seattle region has a lot of musical theater fans.”
A fan herself, Helm said she got the singing-acting bug when she was a girl.
“My mother took me to see a lot of shows. She kept all the playbills in our piano bench,” Helm said. “So when I first got ready for an audition, we pulled out all the playbills to I could choose a scene and a song to perform. God bless my mom.”
Dr. Jekyll, engaged to another woman, is attracted to Helm’s character Lucy, a performer in a pub. Mr. Hyde, however, becomes obsessed with Lucy and begins to stalk her.
A writer for the Chicago Tribune said, “The great strength of this show is its score.”
Helm agrees.
“It’s a very gratifying score to sing,” Helm said. “There’s something great for each vocalist in the cast.”
With tunes that include “This Is the Moment,” “Someone Like You” and “A New Life,” the show started on Broadway in 1997. Since then, “Jekyll &Hyde” has been produced in four major tours and more than 500 regional productions in the United States and Canada.
The current tour ends March 29 in Upstate New York, and after that Helm plans to return to New York City ready to audition for her next musical.
Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @galefiege.
If you go
“Jekyll &Hyde is 7 p.m. Jan. 25 at Xfinity Arena.
Tickets: $38, $48 or $63, available at the Xfinity box office, 2000 Hewitt Ave., Everett, online at www.xfinityarenaeverett.com or by calling 425-322-2629. Tickets bought at the box office don’t include extra fees.
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