THEATER Athlete-turned-thespian set to rock MCA with ‘Jekyll’

“Let’s go out there and knock some crap outta this concert!” isn’t the type of rallying cry most Broadway singers issue. But Rob Evan, a kicker for the University of Georgia football team in the 1980s, isn’t a typical Broadway singer. First of all, he studied finance in college and was on a law-school track when he won a local talent contest after his girlfriend secretly sent a recording of his singing to judges.

After working on a cruise ship and singing pops with symphonies on land, Evan was a struggling waiter in New York City for all of three months before landing a spot in “Les Miserables” in the early 1990s. He has been working on Broadway productions, often as the leading man, ever since. The performance Evan is now hoping to kick some butt with is a national tour of “Jekyll & Hyde: The Concert,” which lands at 7 p.m. Oct. 9 at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono.

Adapted from the sprawling 1997 Broadway musical, in which Evan also starred, the theatrical event features only three singers including Kate Shindle and Victoria Matlock, a five-piece band and a team of classical musicians from the Bangor Symphony Orchestra. In New York, “Jekyll & Hyde” met with mixed reviews from the critics, but its gothic setting and good-vs.-evil theme won a cult following of fans known as “Jekkies.” The story is based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s fright tale of Henry Jekyll, a mad scientist whose experimentation with drugs unleashes his evil inner self, Edward Hyde. Hyde is the original Incredible Hulk gone bad.

On Broadway, Evan performed the dual role more than 600 times. In the concert version, he still makes the creepy transformation from doc to demon, but the show’s sex-and-gore factor has dropped from R to PG-13, making it appropriate for older kids, said Evan, father of three boys ages 9, 7 and 5. “It’s less ‘boo-scary,'” the actor-dad said. “It’s really just a big ol’ jam session. It’s for a theater crowd, music lovers and the MTV age. The music is hip. It has a U2-concert kind of vibe.” Evan happens to know a little something about that vibe, too.

Before the football, before Broadway, before doing TV commercials and spots on daytime soaps, Evan wanted to be a rock star. He eventually got his chance as a singer for two years with the heavy metal Christmas band Trans-Siberian Orchestra. “It’s the most famous band nobody has heard of. We sell out arenas. We sell out the Garden. We’ve sold out Portland,” he said. He won’t do this year’s TSO tour. For now, he’s sticking with the J&H team. What would each of his characters say about the battle of good and evil? “Jekyll is a good man, but he’s completely misled,” said Evan. “Hyde would answer in one word.” Here his voice dropped into a raspy growl: “Free!”

-Alicia Anstead