Jekyll And Hyde Club
Controlling London’s Seedy Underground With the Push of a Button
Experiences
Collaborators
- Jekyll & Hyde Club
Project Overview
At Jekyll and Hyde Club in Times Square, visitors entered what looked like a small, unassuming curiosity shop and stepped through a secret passage to London’s seedy underground – complete with macabre characters and a dark story.
With a skeleton band to set the mood and character performers to entertain visitors, dinner at Jekyll and Hyde Club was just a peek into Dr. Jekyll’s devious mind of fantasy and horror.
Design Approach
Designed to overwhelm visitors with stimulation, The Jekyll and Hyde Club was filled with servers who would invite visitors to experience the dark environment, actors who compelled visitors to interact with the space and amongst themselves, and animatronics that commanded attention from everyone in the room. Every layer of interaction between diners, staff, and the space itself created an unrepeatable, unique experience every time someone visited the legendary restaurant.
What We Built
With a blend of Dr. Jekyll’s found artifacts and hand-made fantasy pieces crafted by LF Studios, visitors were intrigued by possessed sculptures, gothic portraits with personality, and curio cabinets full of bizarre treasures. At opposite ends of the dining space, Dracula’s coffin and Frankenstein’s operating table were the center of diner experience, animating each hour interchangeably to diversify show moments and to portray the unpredictable mysticism of the space.
Unlike other immersive dinner experiences, Jekyll and Hyde Club in New York catered to an adult customer base. Able to push boundaries and bring a daring new experience to Times Square, LF Studios crafted truly menacing monsters that startled unassuming visitors and programmed a show around Dr. Jekyll’s personal demons. Gallery walls of haunted masks taunted visitors and told stories that would make even the toughest visitor’s skin crawl. Local actors were hired and encouraged to interact with the animatronics around the space and include visitors in the dark dealings of Dr. Jekyll.
Our Breakthrough
To create unique experiences that were flexible with the day-to-day operation of a restaurant, LF Studios designed the space with multiple levels of interactivity. Pre-programmed and scheduled shows allowed for performances run on auto-pilot, as well as the ability for actors to trigger quick pre-scripted interactions between visitors, animatronics, and themselves.
Behind-the-scenes, actors could “take over” an animatronic using a hidden camera and microphone to interact with servers, visitors, and other actors for improv or special events. Multiple actors could chime in, creating a lively debate with visitors through the animatronics. Entire rooms could be taken over, using microphones and animatronic controls to fully immerse visitors in the performance.
Results
The level of interactivity possible in the space allowed management to schedule different numbers of actors at different times, while providing a polished and fresh story every visit, so first-time tourists and New York residents could each have unique evenings at Jekyll and Hyde Club.
