The Mystery of Edwin Drood - Original Cast (CD 1995)

Although it's far from being one of the best musicals ever written, The Mystery of Edwin Drood will always be one of my favorites. It isn't because of the attractive score and the witty book by Rupert Holmes, although they are remarkably impressive for a first time writer. My affection for the show is purely personal: my wife and I fell in love while we were acting in a local production.

The Show

Before I auditioned, I remembered seeing a song from the show when it won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1986. I knew that it was based on Charles Dickens' unfinished final novel. I also knew that it was around some "solve-it-yourself" gimmick that sounded thoroughly irritating. I didn't know that the whole thing was written by the guy who wrote and performed "Escape (The Pina Colada Song." I doubt seriously that I would have auditioned if I had.

The setting is really not Dickens' gloomy Cloisterham village- it's a Victorian music hall that is producing a somewhat ill-advised adaptation of the novel. In keeping with a fad of the period, the title character is played by a male impersonator. Drood is engaged to marry Rosa Budd, but his sinister uncle John Jasper is also in love with her. Jasper travels to the opium den run by the mysterious Princess Puffer and plans some evil against Drood. There are other suspects, a storm, and a mysterious disappearance.

The plot is merely an excuse for dramatic, atmospheric songs and for music hall numbers that interrupt it. It works as a chance for actors and audience to play together. The audience gets to vote three times: on which character is the detective is disguise, which is the murderer, and which pair should fall in love at the conclusion of the show.

The Score

Holmes' music is excellent. It's not surprising, given his success as a writer of popular music, that he was able to come up with exquisite ballads like "Moonfall," the song that Jasper writes to show his affection for Rosa. Grim and gorgeous in its unexpected intervals, it is one of the most beautiful songs written for a musical in the last twenty years.

More surprising is Holmes' adroitness in changing musical styles. The score includes several musical hall crowd pleasers, a dramatic duet, a dramatic quintet, and a patter song. He also wrote an appropriate musical confession for each character that can be chosen as murderer, each properly built from the character's own musical themes.

The lyrics are less skillfully done than the music. Holmes' words succeed at creating atmosphere, but they don't always convey plot as well as they should. The best lyrics for the musical theater "prick the ear," to use Stephen Sondheim's phrase: their meaning cuts through the music and is clear to the audience. Holmes' elaborate syntax works well on the recording, but the sentences are sometimes too long and involved to come across strongly in performance. An example:

Glances cut like blood through bone;
With daggers drawn I glare at you,
There at you who dare presume
To stare at whom
I'd make my wife
And share my life-
I'd see you dead before sweet Rosa wed.

And they say Sondheim is wordy!

The Recording

The cast for this recording is absolutely first class. Howard McGillin, incredibly not billed above the title, is extraordinary as John Jasper. McGillin does not shrink away from the melodrama inherent in his villainous character, but he sings with such beauty and genuine passion that it is impossible not to love him. "The Name of Love," his duet with Patti Cohenour's Rosa, was the Act One finale in the hands of its original performers. When Holmes was preparing the touring version of the show, he realized McGillin and Cohenour were irreplaceable and moved the song.

Cohenour also excels in "Perfect Strangers" her duet with Betty Buckley. I think this is Buckley's most enjoyable recording. Her unique voice is well suited to the difficult task of playing simultaneously a young man and a sexy grande dame.

Cleo Laine sings as well you would expect, but she is also very funny and acts deftly. The ensemble is notable for the number of big future Broadway name it contains: Judy Kuhn, Rob Marshall, and Donna Murphy.

Unfortunately, you probably can't get the Drood recording you really want. The original 1986 Polydor CD included all versions of "Out on a Limerick" and all of the murderer's confessions. This is one of the rarer musical theater CDs (with uncharacteristic luck, I found mine used for $6.95.) Even if you find it, you still want the more recent Varese Sarabande release, which includes two songs from the LP but not on the original CD. Still want more Drood? The first Lost in Boston album includes two songs cut from this show.

P.S. My wife (annbronson on and off Epinions) played Rosa Budd. I played Neville Landless, the hot-blooded stranger from India. We tied for being the performers most often selected as the murderer in our production (she was brilliant, I cheated), but we were never, ever chosen to be the lovers together at the end of the play.