By Josephine Norris, Photo Editor.
Have you ever read a book or watched a movie and wished that the ending was different? “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” at Midland Center for the Arts offers you the chance to change the ending to this musical.
The author Charles Dickens happened to die at one of the most inconvenient times – right in the middle of writing his novel “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” giving new meaning to the term “cliffhanger.” The absence of an ending has nagged at imaginations for centuries.
The story opens with young Edwin Drood traveling to Cloisterham to visit his dubious uncle and loving betrothed, Rosa Bud. As Drood meets more and more of the characters in Cloisterham, the plot and the music intensifies until one fateful evening when Edwin goes missing and a bloodied cloak is found, leaving multiple suspects with compelling motives as to the murder of Drood.
The premise of the musical is that of a “pick-your-ending” musical.There are over 200 possible outcomes for the show and as a result, every show has a different ending. Audience participation is key as the audience chooses the detective, the murderer and a pair of lovers.
On the surface, “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” seems to be a simple and entertaining show. However, due to the large cast size and complicated plot, if one piece isn’t up to par, the rest of the production suffers. In particular, there were several lost opportunities for the actors of “Drood” to infuse even more energy and quirks to their characters. Every role is meant to be larger than life and ridiculous – that’s what theater used to be in vaudeville. The choreography was lacking. There were many opportunities for large group numbers to stop the show and those opportunities were missed. That said, vocally, no opportunities were lost as the music onstage traveled into the audience’s ears. The vocal chops of the cast was outstanding and I could listen to Kaitlyn Riel, who plays Edwin Drood, sing the finale “Writing on the Wall” all day.
The costumes were beautiful and it was obvious that the costume designer spent many a hour crafting these mid-1800s ensembles, but the show takes place on the stage of the Theater Royale. You can get the sense that the company couldn’t really afford brand new costumes for the entire cast and the costumes the actors wore onstage were obviously brand new. It would’ve been great to have seen some dirt and weathering of the costumes to have an authentic feel.
The lights were as vibrant and colorful as the characters themselves and the imaginative lighting design with moving gobo patterns and bold color added to the visual spectacle of the show. The rotating stage in the theater lent itself well to smooth and quick transitions from scene to scene as the large multi story set spun and revealed the next scene.
