THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD – Book, Music, and Lyrics by Rupert Holmes; Directed by Bernie Cardell, Musical Direction by Jerimiah Otto, Choreography by Stephanie Hesse. Produced by Vintage Theatre Productions (1468 Dayton Street, Aurora) through January 11. Tickets available at 303-856-7830 or VintageTheatre.org.
The first time I saw DROOD, it was in preview with a very small audience. While clever and funny, something was missing. This is a big, sprawling, raucous musical with many moving parts that depends on an audience willing to play with them. The missing ingredient was the audience. The second viewing with a nearly full house, however, was a whole new experience. The players walked into the house, introduced themselves to the sitting audience, and everyone was engaged. The telling of this unfinished Dickens story became a party.
Led by Brian Trampler in the role of The Chairman, the music hall actors are introduced. There are the stereotypical roles: the young ingenue, the handsome leading man, the female backbone of the company (tonight playing the male role of Drood), the exotics, the bumbling villagers, the flashy vamp, the snarky villain, and so forth. Each actor from Vintage plays a member of the acting company AND a character in the Drood story they are acting out. A tricky assignment, to say the least. But they pull it off. Everything changes when they move from being actors in the company to being a character in the play. They walk taller, the women simper, actor voices are used, and, instead of talking like humans, they Enunciate with a capital E!
Brian does a superlative job of introducing the Actors to the audience, giving them a history and their place in the company. When it starts getting complicated, he sorts out the Characters to keep everything on track. Makenzie Couch, as the operatic ingenue, is appropriately innocent but understands exactly what her lecherous guardian uncle is doing when he stares at her. William Kahn, as that dastardly uncle, is both evil and pitiful. Jysten Atom and Ariana DuRan are beautiful East Indian brother and sister characters, both creating difficult romantic complications for others. Deb Persoff is the vamp of the show with a surprising connection to another character.
The additional gimmick in this script is that Dickens passed away midstride of finishing the serialized novel. So, to add to the double roles each actor must play, there’s also the problem of not knowing how it was meant to end. Rupert Holmes, rather than creating his own ending to the script, concocted multiple endings to the question of who killed whom. By virtue of their applause, the audience votes on potential murderers and an unorthodox “happily ever after” ending for two unaware lovers. This creates a new and surprising ending for each performance.
The Music Hall stage, designed and built by Don Fuller, assisted by Biz Schaugaard, Bernie Richard, Lexie Renfro, is shiny enough to be Trump’s toilet and authentic enough to be lifted from a turn-of-the-century English panto. The costumes by Clay Emarine are colorful and appropriate to the era and the characters. All in all, a fast-moving complicated musical story kept on track by Director Bernie Cardell in the staging and Stage Manager Jennifer Schmitz in the performance.
Cast illness caused this production to halt performance last weekend. This means that you only have two weekends left to take part in the fun. This also means that the show must go on for these final weekends – even if Bernie has to don a costume and play a role himself! Get on it!! Those seats are going to fill up fast!
A WOW factor of 8.5!