Character Connection: Mr. Edward Hyde

This month for a Character Connection, Jen has encouraged us to highlight some of our favorite bad boys. Or vile villains, or creepy crazies, or mysterious monsters. Or at least something very quite Halloween-y!

Also, over at Age 30+, Heather's been having a monster duel between Mr. Hyde and Dorian Gray. The winner between these two is obvious to me, and so therefore for my scary Character Connection I thought I'd highlight one of my favorite very bad Bad Boys, Mr. Hyde.

In a post awhile back I talked about how fascinating the gray villains are, the ones who walk that line between bad and good. So here's the thing about Mr. Hyde, there is not one bit of gray about him,  he is totally black. His very definition and reason for being is that he is all that is bad about Dr. Jekyll, right? You take Dr. Jekyll, gather up all the bad that's in him, and you have Mr. Hyde.

So why then does he still make me feel sorry for him?

I have no idea, but I do. Maybe because he is more real than other monsters? Maybe more possible? Maybe because of the scariness in the fact that we all have those bad parts of us that most of us are able to suppress, but if we didn't or couldn't, then what or who would our Mr. Hyde be? Maybe that's why, because he is a monster we can somehow relate to? I don't know, what do you think?

It's been long awhile since I've read the book and therefore, my favorite depiction of Mr. Hyde, (and one of the reasons I'm so drawn to his character,) is actually from the musical Jekyll and Hyde. Have you seen it? Awesome stuff. And the best song, the one that gives me chills and makes me crazy and forget to breathe is when the two characters (but obviously the same man) of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are confronting each other at the end, the key moment of the whole play, a literal battle between good and evil.

Here I give you two versions. This first one is simply the song in all it's intesnity (keep in mind...it's just one guy singing):



And here, though you can't hear the song as well, you can get a feeling for how it is acted on the stage (these clips are both sung and acted by Robert Cuccioli, who is amazing):



In browsing through YouTube to find these clips, I've found all sorts of other songs from this musical and I feel like posting them all. But I won't. I do think I'll mention though, that the most famous and well known song from this musical is This Is The Moment, sung by the doctor just before he goes through with the experiment. Beautiful song.

Anyway yes, I have this weird fascination with Mr. Hyde, scary though he is. Who's your favorite monster with not-a-bit-of-gray bad boy?