I’m not that big of a musical fan, despite being a Theatre geek. The few that I do love have some connection to the Crime or Horror genres. I liked CHICAGO. I dig the PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. And I love JEKYLL AND HYDE. The rest of them, for the most part, you can keep.
As far as the latter goes, I’ve seen it performed live. I own the soundtrack. While I probably would have gotten more excited over news that a straight remake of the classic movie was in the works, I’m still stoked about this. (Let’s just hope the finished product ends up being better than the Joel Schumacher-directed THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA of a few years back.) In truth I like what they did to expand the storyline for the play. I like it better than the storyline of the novella by Robert Louis Stevenson. The creators of the play, Frank Wildhorn and Steve Cuden, didn’t scrap what Stevenson had created, they just added to it. They gave Jekyll a couple of love interests. It makes for a fuller and more satisfying story, honestly. And since the definitive straight adaptation of Stevenson’s story has been made already, the 1931 masterpiece DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE starring Fredric March, why *not* do the musical instead?