Review: The Mystery Of Edwin Drood (Rocky Horror meets Dickens?)

I saw a “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” produced by River Rep at the Ivoryton Playhouse in lovely Essex,CT.

I had never seen this show before and found it to be absolutely delightful. It was Rocky Horror meets Dickens the way that the action keeps pausing to have a narrator explain things. Also, it was completely campy. Each time a new character makes an entrance the narrator introduces them as a famous British actor and the actor turns to the audience to smile, bow, and act like a movie star, then returns to character.

The premise is that Dickens died while writing this mystery and nobody knows how it’s supposed to end. Therefore, they explain a couple possibilities and the audience votes. The way they collect votes makes it difficult to figure out who the audience picked, therefore it’s still a surprise exactly who will be revealed as the murderer.

Our audience was mostly senior citizens and they picked the obvious villain, which was lame. To me it was obvious that Dickens was setting him up as the villain as a bit of misdirection so we would be surprised when we find that the killer was someone else. That’s Dickens, right? There’s always a big surprise... so much so that it isn’t a surprise. Well this crowd voted who they thought was evil, rather than going with who would make the most interesting conclusion.

There’s got to be an analogy for the current political situation somewhere in there. Isn’t that ironic?