Students practice the song “Off to the Races” recently for their production of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.”
Camden Catholic High School students will perform “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” a musical about a British acting troupe, next month.
A show within a show, the musical features actors playing performers in a British troupe who solve the mystery of a man who gets murdered. It is based on Charles Dickens’ unfinished novel of the same name and features a different ending each night, based on audience votes.
“I chose the show because I thought it was going to suit the talents of our cast,” said director Angela Leone Carrozzino.
She recalled how seniors who’ve been involved in performing since freshman year did their first show as a hybrid and two others wearing masks.
“We kind of are very bonded because of that,” Leone Carrozzino recalled. “I just wanted to make sure we did something to showcase the tremendous amount of talent in that class.”
To adapt “Drood” for a student production, Leone Carrozzino emailed the show’s writer, Rupert Holmes, who responded with details, a highlight for both the director and the students.
The musical is high energy and highly interactive, and the mystery of who murdered Edwin Drood is actually up to the audience to decide each night. To prepare for that, students rehearse multiple endings and memorize multiple sets of lines. Stage cues, lines and costumes can also be different based on the audience’s choice.
“It’s a mystery for us every night during the rehearsal process because we will never know how it ends until we’re on stage, literally staring at the audience,” explained Gianna Lauria, a senior who plays the British actor Alice Nutting.
“We get five minutes to take it in.”
While most of the Camden Catholic performers hadn’t heard of the show before, Lauria and fellow performer Gianna Giegerich, who plays British actor Deirdre Peregrine, saw that once they go to rehearse the music and vocals, everything started to mesh.
“When they announced this show, first glance, I thought, ‘Theyre crazy, there’s no way they chose this show,'” Giegerich remembered. “I was in awe. But we’ve also felt this way about other shows in the past. The thing is, they always pick the right thing … The whole production staff know what they’re doing.”
In addition to different endings, the students have also improvised lines. Lauria and Giegerich noted that the ensemble plays a huge role in the show because of how background characters are thinking about different people confessing to the murder.
“The show is very melodramatic,” Leone Carrozzino pointed out. “It’s very self-aware, it’s truly, truly funny. And the confessions are so good.”
“Ensemble has a huge part in this show, because they’re setting the scene for what are the background characters thinking about this person being the murderer,” Lauria added.
Show dates are Friday, March 8; Saturday, March 9; and Sunday, March 10, as well as the following weekend, also on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Friday and Saturday performances will start at 7:30 p.m., and at 2 p.m. on Sunday.
More information can be found at https://www.cchsperformingarts.com/tickets.
