It’s a musical about the essential duality of human beings. It’s a feminist manifesto in disguise. It’s a steampunk statement about soulless society. It’s full of sex, or is it full of heart? It’s rock ‘n’ roll – except when it isn’t, exactly. It’s a work in progress en route to a Broadway run next spring.

In fact, the only thing we can be sure this show is not, according to star Constantine Maroulis, is “your grandfather’s ‘Jekyll & Hyde.’ ” By which he means not Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella but the tunefest that closed on Broadway 11 years ago.

The touring version that opens the Broadway Lights Series Tuesday will still have songs by Frank Wildhorn and Leslie Bricusse, including two new numbers: “I Need to Know” for the doctor, and “Bring on the Men” for Lucy, the prostitute drawn to both sides of his split personality.

But neither Maroulis nor Deborah Cox (who plays Lucy) nor director Jeff Calhoun saw the 1997 production, which critics mainly scorned but audiences embraced during a four-year run. (Obsessive fans were dubbed Jekkies, a la Trekkies.)

“I’m looking at this as a completely new piece, like I’m originating a role,” says Cox. “The instrumentation has been tailor-made for myself and Constantine. His new song is about the struggle to find some cure for his father; you feel for his character in a way that wasn’t there before.

“I see Lucy as strong, extremely vulnerable, overtly sexy – because of being a prostitute – but a fighter, a survivor whose way of survival is to find the comedy in life. She’s from the streets, and the streets are rough, whether you’re in London or America or anywhere in the world.”

If you know only the novella, you may be thinking, “Who in blazes is Lucy? The only woman in the book was a maid who saw an old man murdered. And what was that about curing Jekyll’s father?”

Wildhorn and Bricusse didn’t want a hero who selfishly fooled around in the lab, so they made him a researcher seeking a cure for his dad’s dementia. Jekyll now has a fiancée in Emma, a doctor’s daughter, and an admirer in Lucy, who’s also drawn to the vicious but charismatic Hyde.

That would be the Hyde who slays seven people, yes?

“I’m still trying to figure out whether Hyde is a tragic figure or not,” says Maroulis. “That’s a conversation we could have weeks from now or years from now. This show elicits those conversations from the audience: I got into one with a group of bright kids, girls who were just so articulate, and they were fascinated by the duality of man. That’s (a topic) for all ages.”

This production aims to shatter preconceptions in multiple ways. Set and costume designer Tobin Ost has jettisoned typical Broadway grandeur for a lean steampunk look, combining Victorian-era styles with modern mechanistic designs. Calhoun, a Tony nominee this year for “Newsies,” has increased the pace of the show.

Cox let go of the style that made her one of the top R&B singers of her native Canada. Instead, she’s stretching musical muscles from her last Broadway gig: playing the title role in Broadway’s “Aida” for six months in 2004.

“All singing is a kind of storytelling,” she says. “I have always wanted to have a career as an actress and do musical theater. A recording career is lucrative and has all kinds of perks, but ‘Jekyll & Hyde’ fills in the creative gaps that aren’t filled by the recording career.

“Lucy’s completely different from me. (The married Cox has three kids.) Her overt sexiness is always an adjustment, and I’m WAAAAY out of my comfort zone. So if the audience walks away feeling something, that’s a triumph.”

The conservatory-trained Maroulis has theatrical chops: He toured in the leading role of Roger in “Rent,” took over a supporting role in “The Wedding Singer” on Broadway, then earned a 2009 Tony nomination for playing a would-be pop star in “Rock of Ages.”

But in mainstream America, through which the “Jekyll” tour will pass for six months before reaching Broadway, he’s probably that big-voiced tenor whose eyes burned and whose tresses seemed to blow out behind him on the 2005 “American Idol.” (He finished sixth.) “I voted for you, man!” shouted an autograph hunter during our phone interview. “Not often enough, apparently,” Maroulis said wryly after signing.

“I grew up with a taste for darker music, for darker characters in cinema and comic books,” he says. “People have gotten to know me as someone who does popular music and television” – notably the soap opera “The Bold and the Beautiful” in 2007 – “but I’ve always had a sense of what the dark Gothic world was like.

“When I tell people I’m touring in ‘Jekyll & Hyde,’ they say, ‘Oh, yeah, Constantine – the voice, the hair, the eyes, I get what that’s about.’ I just say, ‘Come see the show, and keep an open mind.’ ”