THIS is the moment to see Jekyll & Hyde because impresario Bill Kenwright’s new touring production of the Broadway musical leaves town tonight.

In a nutshell, it is a very good performance of a not particularly good musical adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella that has but one memorable song, the aforementioned This Is The Moment. What you need in such circumstances is a stellar lead performance, and Marti Pellow delivers just that.

Pellow’s presence was the primary reason for the Leeds Grand booking the show, and he still carries a retinue of fluttering female fans from his Wet Wet Wet days that enjoy his journey to the dark side – a journey of course that he made in his own life when heroin addiction took its grip for three years before pop’s Mr Clean Cut cleaned up his act in July 1999.

It would be trite to speculate how much that past informs his performance here, as you watch him go to work with the chemicals that will transform his upstanding if obsessive Dr Henry Jekyll into the vengeful, sadistic alter ego Edward Hyde. Instead, it is better to say that after a steady start, he comes to straddle the handsome/devil divide between Jekyll and Hyde with increasing conviction, to the point that he is seriously good at the evil side of the dangerously dual personality; seductively extreme rather than monstrous.

Just occasionally his words are lost in Hyde’s moments of anger, but Pellow’s acting avoids melodrama and his singing of the largely narrative songs by Frank Wildhorn and Leslie Bricusse is expressive and impassioned, peaking with the big number.

He interacts well with both female principals: Sarah Earnshaw’s loyal, unknowing fiancée, Emma, and especially Sabrina Carter’s Lucy, the love-struck yet fearful prostitute, who sings wonderfully, albeit in an accent that does not match her speaking voice.

Martin Connor’s production is blessed with an impressive gothic London street design by Mark Bailey, superb Victorian costumes by Jonathan Lipman and excellent sound and lighting design by Nick Richings and Ben Harrison respectively.

After a slow first half hour, the show grows and grows to a satisfying whole, not only in its lead roles but in two ensemble routines, choreographed with wit and sassiness by Bill Deamer: the high-society scorn of Bitch, Bitch, Bitch and the saucy bidding of the ladies of the night in Bring On the Men.

A deliciously wicked way to spend tonight or tomorrow awaits you.

Jekyll & Hyde The Musical, Leeds Grand Theatre, tonight at 7.30pm and tomorrow at 2.30pm and 7.30pm. Box office: 0844 848 2700.