Some theatre company with a fantastically large budget and remarkably little insight was half-hourly giving demos of its current slack-nosed musical, Jekyll & Hyde. The flyers were exquisitely produced, with a title in the style of (if not stolen directly from) Ralph Steadman, that great intimator of the inkblot. Since they had got use of an atrium of a major shopping mall, and were making use of a PA, I imagine they must be well-funded. They were all dressed in themed black T-shirts and black jeans, except for a couple of cast members in baggy gray T-shirts or loud shoes. One imagines these hapless singers slapping their foreheads on arrival at the mall: "I forgot my black T-shirt!" he laments. "Just wear your gray one, it's only a mall show," coos a fellow actor. The choreography was blunt, inaccurate, and even clumsy when fitted to the given space, a stairwell rotunda with passing traffic. They did the same four numbers over and over while I obsessively patrolled a nearby bookseller's, sucking from the commercial rock some tidbits on the history of typography, architecture, and food.

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