Entertainer and theatre producer Paul Nicholas is finding audiences harder to find than expected with his touring version of Jekyll And Hyde. He tells Viv Hardwick about the trials of touring a new new musical.

THERE are times when Paul Nicholas wouldn't mind sparing a little of his Jekyll And Hyde formula to embolden ticket-buyers. He admits it's a hard sell touring a show that few have heard of... and especially difficult when the selling point remains his own appeal in this twin-role horror tale.

At stake is a West End run, but currently, Nicholas, in his double role of star and co-producer, is battling with the aftermath of a cold while drumming up support for a week-long run at Sunderland's Empire Theatre.

With a voice sounding like it's caught in mid-transformation between good and evil, the performer, who will celebrate his 60th birthday this year, remains polite and realistic about his fortunes.

"The bugbear about the West End is not only do you have to find a theatre, but it has to be one that wants you," growls the man who made his reputation for staging London musicals with the ever-popular Grease and Saturday Night Fever.

Nicholas remains hopeful that a dark tale taken from Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 short story, complete with an on-stage murder, will repay his decision to purchase the US show created in 1995 by Leslie Briscusse (book and lyrics) with music by former pop composer Frank Wildhorn.

"A lot of shows that tour around are revivals and I took this on because I think it's a good musical with extremely strong music and I think the subject is interesting. Potentially the show has legs, now whether the legs will reach the West End is another matter, but that was the intention," he explains.

"It's also true that I was looking for something for me that fitted me as a performer," adds the man still fondly remembered for Eighties BBC sitcom Just Good Friends.

He confirms his cash at stake in Jekyll And Hyde is an additional burden: "It means financially you have more risk, although it's a new show and interesting to do, it's a harder sell because most of the British public don't know the musical unlike a Carousel or Fiddler On The Roof."

When I admit that I'd gone on the Internet to research some background on Jekyll And Hyde, he teases: "I think all you guys write your reviews from the Internet as well, after you see what everyone else has said." Having assured him that The Echo approaches each performance on its merits, Nicholas explains that the plot of a Victorian chemist, who discovers a formula which separates good and evil, is mostly based on the 1931 and 1941 films starring Fredric March and Spencer Tracy.

"The original story is a study of a man but doesn't introduce too many characters. So the films introduced Ingrid Bergman as a prostitute and Lana Turner as the fiancee of Dr Jekyll. What is interesting for me is that most musicals have flimsy plots and I'm not saying this is Shakespeare, but what it does have is an intensity that the audience stay with.

I'm aware that the audience are really listening, which you don't always get with a musical. This isn't a show involving costumes and fluff" he says. Nicholas feels that the image portrayed of him in the past as a lightweight charmer is a little unfair. He comments: "There's a misinterpretation by a number of people that drama and being dark and miserable and heavy is more difficult than being funny and attractive. It's an absolute load of nonsense. It's much more difficult to make people laugh and to try and make that look easy than to slit someone's throat and calling them every name under the sun. I never understood the snobbery, particularly by casting people, that perceives dramatic is more difficult... that's nonsense."

ASKED to reflect on the characters he transforms between, the showman says: "What is interesting it that when people come backstage after the show they always say 'we enjoyed your performance of Hyde' and never mention Dr Jekyll, so people tend to go for the seamier side of your performance.

"I do the transformation on stage and when I take the potion there's a change in the music and I turn into Mr Hyde. I was a little bit worried if that would be convincing enough for an audience, but it seems to be working quite well." He hopes that the performances at Sunderland will benefit from the restructuring of this new version that has carried on during the first half of the tour.

"I do think it takes time for a new show to bed in and find its feet and I've been very pleased with the reaction to the second half of the tour, particularly now this is in the cast's bones," Nicholas says, having got involved with Jekyll And Hyde initially on the strength of a CD.

The sunnier side of Nicholas emerges when you mention that son Alex has just landed his first musical role in the current tour of The King And I, which plays Sunderland in the autumn. Alex has retained his father's original name of Beuselinck and his proud dad says: "I'm thrilled he's gone into showbusiness because if you want to be a performer there ain't no other place you can do it. I think I might change my name to Paul Nicholas-Beuselinck and if he gets very famous I will."

* Jekyll And Hyde runs at Sunderland's Empire from May 17 to May 21. Box Office: 0870 602 1130.

Published: 12/05/2005