When SpeakEasy Stage Company artistic director Paul Daigneault chose "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" as the company's holiday musical, he thought it would be a lark. "What I discovered," he says before heading into a recent rehearsal, "is that it's much more complicated."
The musical, which runs at the Roberts Studio in the Boston Center for the Arts starting Nov. 16, is based on Charles Dickens's incomplete final novel, a murder mystery. "Drood" is designed as a play within a play, in which a struggling Victorian acting troupe stages its own musical version of the story. The audience votes on who the detective is, and just as the actors seem ready to reveal the solution to the crime, the show stops and the audience is asked to vote on the ending.
"Since the deck isn't stacked toward any one character, as the director, I had to cast eight performers who are in the same playing field," Daigneault says. The resulting ensemble includes SpeakEasy favorites Edward Barker, Leigh Barrett, Kerry Dowling, Brendan McNab, Michael Mendiola, and Will McGarrahan.
"It turns out the show is a character actor's dream, and after embracing the Victorian stock character element, these performers really have some fun with it," Daigneault says.
Composer, lyricist, and book writer Rupert Holmes says that's exactly what he was hoping for when he wrote "Edwin Drood," his first musical, in 1985. "The whole idea for 'Drood' came from my love of mysteries and period pieces and my experience in a British music hall," says Holmes by phone from his home in New York. "I love the format of the music-hall experience, where everyone in the audience knows the songs, they know the performers, and they're happy to have a [master of ceremonies] organize the evening. You're treated as if you're already old friends with these people."
In an era when participatory theater is often sneered at and a country where there is no music-hall tradition, Holmes says he's never surprised at the audience's eagerness to get involved. "They're shy to volunteer," he says, "but most people want to join the festivities. Part of it is that they're in this wonderful imaginary world of Dickens and 19th-century England, and I think that makes it easier than a contemporary setting."
Period pieces have become a specialty for Holmes, who's also a novelist. Although he began his career writing songs for TV's "The Partridge Family" and Barbra Streisand and performing his own tunes - including the '70s megahit "Escape (the Pina Colada Song)" - he says it's now unusual for him to write a contemporary piece. Since "Drood," Holmes has written AMC TV's "Remember WENN" about a 1940s radio station, the one-man show "Say Goodnight, Gracie" about George Burns and Gracie Allen, and the book for a musical adaptation of the '50s teleplay and film "Marty."
He's currently represented on Broadway with "Curtains," the Kander and Ebb musical set in 1959, for which Holmes contributed the book and some additional lyrics. Upcoming projects include a musical based on Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and the book for Mark Holman's musical version of "My Man Godfrey."
"I love to immerse myself in a particular period," says Holmes. "I enjoy learning the rhythms of the era. I think it helps that I'm a musician, because storytelling requires that sense of rhythm."
Holmes says that as a lyricist, he's also naturally drawn to mysteries. "Writing lyrics is akin to solving a puzzle," he says. He often knows where he wants a rhyme to end up, and then he has to find a way to make the earlier lines in the song lead there. It's the same with writing a mystery. "As the writer, you know how it's going to turn out, and you drop clues and create red herrings to lead audiences in one direction or another," he says. "It's fun to palm the ace and then see who figures it out. It's even more fun to leave it unsolved, as in 'Drood,' and let the audiences decide whodunit. I got such a kick out of watching audiences get invested in it."
Through Dec. 15. Tickets: $46-$54. 617-933-8600, boston theatrescene.com
Ticket discounts
Veterans and their families and friends will be admitted free to the Huntington Theatre Company's "Streamers" this Sunday in honor of Veterans Day (up to four tickets each). Today through Tuesday, all tickets to preview performances of David Rabe's Vietnam War-era play will be $25. (After a nondiscounted performance Nov. 18 at 2 p.m., Boston University professor Andrew Bacevich, an Iraq war opponent who lost his 27-year-old son in the Iraq war, will speak.) 617-266-0800, huntingtontheatre.org. . . . Tickets to all the remaining performances of New Repertory Theatre's "A House With No Walls" will be $10 for patrons who bring a nonperishable food donation. The play runs through Nov. 18 at the Arsenal Center for the Arts, Watertown. 617-923-8487, newrep.org. . . . Zeitgeist Stage and Way Theatre are offering $10 tickets to performances of "The Kentucky Cycle" on Nov. 15-16. The epic runs through Nov. 17 at the Boston Center for the Arts' Black Box Theatre. 617-933-8600 (use code 1832), bostontheatrescene.com. . . . The American Repertory Theatre is offering $25 tickets to families that include someone under 21 to attend the Nov. 23 performance of "No Child . . .," Nilaja Sun's one-woman play about her experiences as a theater artist in some of New York City's toughest schools. Note that the performance includes strong language and is recommended for audiences 15 and older. 617-547-8300, amrep.org.
