Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde at Bay Way Arts Center in Islip Ny
Arts | Long Isle
Separate Personalities and a Double Motive
THE musical "Jekyll and Hyde," about a 19th-century London doctor who develops a split up personality, explores the idea of duality. A new production of it also has a dual nature, according to its executive producer, Beverly J. Bell.
In the case of the new production, which is to run from Thursday through Nov. 21 and Feb. 3 through February. 20 at the Maguire Theater at SUNY College at One-time Westbury, the duality isn't adept and evil, every bit it is in the musical'southward main graphic symbol. Rather, Ms. Bell and her colleagues have a double motive, she said.
First, they desire to put on an entertaining show with flair. That includes using elements of the original Broadway prepare and many of the original costumes, and promoting the performances with a billboard near the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, two huge banners at the Roosevelt Field mall, local TV and radio advertisements, e-mail service campaigns and other Internet promotions.
The 2d reason is more altruistic. "We envision bringing a de facto theater programme dorsum to Old Westbury," said Ms. Bell, a lawyer and an ordained government minister, one recent evening during a pause from rehearsals in a building in Syosset. The college decided to shut its American music, dance and theater department in 1995 because of budget cuts. "Our dream is to work with students," said Ms. Bell, who lives in Glen Head.
Right at present, a student intern, Luke Utkovic, is working on marketing the show, Ms. Bell said, but she besides wants to comprise students backstage and onstage after the musical opens. "We didn't start early enough" to recruit students, she said.
Mr. Utkovic, 23, a marketing major, said he thought students would join in afterwards the production opened. "They're making an effort to brand students enlightened," he said, adding that the evidence, which he saw in its Broadway run from 1997 to 2001, is one of his favorites.
"Information technology's good for our students in terms of gaining real-life experience," said N. J. Delener, dean of the School of Business, who has helped get the project off the footing. "It'south also benign for community interest. And for students who don't accept the means to go to New York, this gives them a cultural opportunity."
Ms. Bell, a senior partner in the law house Humes & Wagner in Locust Valley, is likewise a government minister in the Reformed Church in America and has two seminary degrees. One is a 2002 main'south from the Union Theological Seminary in New York, where she studied social justice, she said.
Ms. Bell sees bringing opportunities to the college's diverse pupil trunk equally part of her religious calling, and a way for her to commemorate her 60th birthday in Dec. She has invested "hundreds of thousands of dollars," she said, calculation, "It's a bound of faith."
She is also an apprentice actress, though she is not performing in this show. She initially got the idea for producing a musical because she and her husband, F. Dana Winslow, a New York State Supreme Court justice, wanted to detect a showcase for the actor David Yudell. Ms. Bell co-starred with Mr. Yudell concluding yr in "Carousel" at Theater past the Bay in Bayside.
"She has a mission, to create something at the schoolhouse" and to practice practiced in other ways, said Mr. Yudell, 54. He said that the Nov. 17 operation volition be a benefit for the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Children's Medical Center of New York, office of the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System. Goose Gossage, the Hall of Fame pitcher, will host a reception before the show. Mr. Yudell said he believed the middle saved his younger daughter'southward life after she was in an car accident, which led Ms. Bell to add the benefit. She is also accommodating his observance of the Jewish Sabbath by not scheduling performances on Fri nights or Saturday afternoons.
Jon Grodeski, 52, the show's director and choreographer, said tickets had been selling well to "Jekkies," fans of the musical from across the land, for whom a party will be held on Nov. 9, a nonperformance solar day, at Rothmann's Steakhouse in East Norwich.
Mr. Grodeski, of Northport, has directed musicals starring performers like Jamie Farr, John Davidson and Debby Boone, too as staged plays at Long Island theaters and at the C.W. Postal service campus of Long Isle University, where he is an adjunct professor.
During the contempo rehearsal, Mr. Grodeski gave directions as Mr. Yudell and other actors performed a number, "Murder, Murder," followed by an emotional scene between Dr. Henry Jekyll and his fiancée, Emma Carew. Then Mr. Yudell sang of Dr. Jekyll's "Obsession" while ii women sang "In His Eyes" — and all that is but the commencement of Act Ii of the musical by Frank Wildhorn, the composer, and Leslie Bricusse, who wrote the lyrics and volume.
"This is a dream part," said Mr. Yudell, who has played leading-man roles in regional productions of "Evita," "South Pacific" and other shows, though he and the other actors — the cast numbers well-nigh 25 — are not members of Actors' Equity.
A real estate agent past day, Mr. Yudell has also helped to market the production, selling sponsorships ($one,000 to $20,000) and coming upwardly with advertising ideas. "Nosotros desire the evidence to take off like a rocket," he said.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/nyregion/31artsli.html
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