“Drood”, or “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”, is an odd collaboration between Charles Dickens and Rupert Holmes. Most of you know Charles Dickens from that movie that show every year around Christmas, and most of you know Rupert Holmes as the guy who wrote “The Pina Colada Song”, but don’t let that influence your feelings on Drood. There is no bitching about yoga and talking about being caught in the rain as if it’s something people REALLY like to do in this musical. Instead, Rupert Holmes, who had spent time as a kid watching pantomime theatre, which included cross dressing and a heavy amount of audience participation, brought a fairly new and interesting feeling to the New York Shakespeare Festival of 1985.
Back in the day, a sudden stroke left Dickens dead and “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” unfinished, and, unlike other authors like Frank Herbert, didn’t leave any notes about how he planned to end the novel. So, of course, this seemed like the absolute best choice to write a musical comedy on. Fortunately for Holmes, and the rest of the creative team, this ended up being a prudent choice, as Drood went on to win the Tony for Best Musical and a ton of other awards.
Drood is a musical within a musical. It opens up with the cast of characters in the audience, and the setting is the fictional Music Hall Royale. The Director of the production company calls his actors to the stage to begin the show during the number “There You Are.” The actors take their places and we go back a generation to the fictional Dickensian town of Cloisterham, where John Jasper, the choirmaster of the local cathedral, informs the audience that he might just be a drug addled maniac in “A Man Could Go Quite Mad.” His reverie is interrupted by his nephew (who’s played by a cross dressing woman), the titular Edwin Drood, and the two of them bond over the song “Two Kinsmen.” Edwin and Jasper talk about how Edwin has been engaged since birth to a woman named Rosa Bud (yeah . . .) and how he plans to travel to Egypt and tear down , the pyramids to construct a highway across the desert.
Speaking of Rosa, we’re transported to her all girls’ school/seminary where Jasper has arrived to give her a music lesson. Today, he has a special treat in his original composition, the not-so-subtly sexual song “Moonfall,” which, by the way, has become a standard for most ingénue sopranos, even if they have no clue what the song is about. Rosa breaks down, and we shift to London where we’re greeted by the Princess Puffer, which is an amazing screen name for any of you thinking a switch (The Wages of Sin). Puffer is an aged former prostitute who is now running an opium den, where Jasper seems to like to hang out. Everyone gets treated to a dream ballet where we find that Jasper wants to kill Drood, because Jasper’s in love with Rosa, if you couldn’t figure this out all ready.
From here, we met the rest of the cast of characters, including the Vicar and his two wards, who were born to English parents, but in India. In the book, these two are full on white people. In the musical, they’re Bollywood rejects. We find out that Rosa and Edwin aren’t so happy to be engaged, and thus call it off (Perfect Strangers). All of the players converge at Jasper’s house to eat, and drink his opium laced wine, and scream at each other (No Good Can Come from Bad). Edwin takes off into the night and the scene ends.
The next morning, Edwin is missing, though the coat he was wearing is found. As the town gathers to wonder what’s going on, Jasper confronts Rosa and the two sing one of the best duets in musical theater, ending the act (The Name of Love/Moonfall Reprise).
We open Act II with Edwin still missing. Puffer shows up to research the mystery, along with the “mystery man” Dick Datchery. The Chairman interrupts the proceedings to let the audience know that they should be ever vigilant for clues that will be following (Off to the Races). While out and about, Puffer runs into Rosa, and hearing her plight, tries to cheer her up by telling her “Don’t Quit While You’re Ahead,” though this is around the time where Dickens died, so the entire casts stops mid song, and kind of mills around. The Chairman takes over and starts to get things back on track. It’s revealed that Dick is being played by the same actress who played Edwin, angry that she’s being kept out of the second act. The cast votes that Edwin really did die, and the actress storms off stage, cause haters gonna hate. Next, the identity of Dick Datchery is voted on by the audience. That out of the way, they finally get to vote on the identity of the killer. Everything in place, the show begins again.
We find that Puffer used to be Rosa’s nanny, but was lead astray by a man (The Garden Path to Hell). She reveals Datchery’s identity and whomever is playing Datchery that night sings about why he or she needed to be in disguise (Out on a Limerick), and points to Jasper as the killer. Jasper confesses to being a drug addled fuck up (Jasper’s Confession) but reveals that he didn’t actually kill Edwin. A Deus ex Machina happens, and the REAL killer is pointed out, and finally gets to inform everyone why they killed Edwin (for about half the killers, they thought they were killing Jasper, and got confused in the rain).
Tired of all this depressing stuff, the Chairman interrupts and directs the audience to vote on a pair of lovers to give this story a happy ending. The lovers sing a duet, and are quickly interrupted as the actress playing Drood jumps on stage to hijack the show and tell everyone that she wasn’t REALLY dead, just pretending (The Writing on the Wall). With no more mystery to solve, the cast takes their bows.
In theater, there are shows that are incredibly written. All you have to do is read the script, and you can just see the magic jumping off the page. Drood isn’t that type of show. Drood is a wonderful show, but unfortunately needs a stellar cast to not drag the show down. That being said, a good cast can make this show take wings. A production is currently being done in London’s West End, and will be a part of Roundabout’s Fall 2012 season staring Chita Rivera as the Princess Puffer and Stephanie J. Block as Drood.
Photo: Broadway Tour.
