Charles Dickens never completed the story of Edwin Drood because he died during its creation. Thus composer/lyricist Rupert Holmes fashioned a tongue-in-cheek, self-referential musical (The Mystery of Edwin Drood) about the story that takes place in London’s Music Hall Royale in 1895. It’s a show within a show — there is a chairman leading us through everything, and the actors even come out in costume prior to the show to warm theatergoers up before setting about performing a bawdy murder mystery.
The shenanigans get interrupted during the second act when the cast runs out of words, comically mimicking the moment Dickens passed on. From that point on, the audience must vote on who they think the murderer is, as well as a mysterious detective character, and pick a couple to fall in love before the action resumes. Further, everyone plays a double role — as their character and the actor playing their character — while Edwin Drood is played by a woman; in this case, Stephanie J. Block. It’s jolly good fun that makes for an evening of light entertainment.
Straddling the line between old-school theater and new-school technology, previously Tony-nominated scenic designer Anna Louizos wanted Studio 54 — once the famed 1970s disco venue, now owned by the Roundabout Theatre Company — to feel like an English music hall, and her first priority was to give it more intimacy. “I thought building our own proscenium within the existing Roundabout one was very important, so I closed the opening of the proscenium considerably by building that gilded proscenium with the boxes above and the doorways [below] to create entrances for the actors,” Louizos told PLSN. “That helped shrink the size of the opening down, and it framed the show in the 19th century.”
Studio 54 has a classic theater feel, but previous owners had filled in the orchestra pit, so whenever a musical comes in, the musicians play in the balcony boxes at stage left and right. For Drood, a lack of a pit might not have been an obstacle since, back in the day, orchestras often played in a roped-in area in front of the audience if there was no pit. It was a concept that Louizos, conductor Paul Gemignani and director Scott Ellis toyed with, but when they assessed the sightlines, it became apparent that audience members in the front would have an obstructed view of the stage.
“We also considered raising the height of the stage to compensate for that, but it would be too extreme in order to make that work,” recalls Louizos. “There is flexibility at Studio 54. They’ll build the stage any height you want, which is great. We figured that since the actors have to come out into the house a number of times during the course of the show, we wanted to make it simpler for them to get on and offstage, so that apron was designed for the show. We had that soft curve and then the two stairs that access to the stage. It was part of the design with the footlights.”
There, but Hidden
While this rendition of The Mystery Of Edwin Drood, the first Broadway revival since its inaugural 1985-1987 run, could have used more obvious automation and technology, it is not overt in its usage. The show relies more on dramatic lighting, sound effects and an exaggerated arch of the eyebrow from the actors. As Louizos noted, the technology is there, but hidden. “The speaker monitors are set in the deck along the apron in between the footlights, with metal grate covering,” she explained. “There’s amplification and sophisticated lights, but we concealed all that. The footlights have mini ColorBlasts in them besides little Birdies.”
Louizos made sure to obscure the speakers in the orchestra boxes, which are generally black with black pipe. “They usually hang black velour and have all the speakers sticking out of there,” she says. “Because [sound designer] Tony Meola wanted to put speakers along there, I decided to find a way to cover them without obscuring the sound. I copied the motif that was on the balcony façade in the house, which is this gold and red detail. We photographed and Photoshopped it and had it printed on speaker mesh. We built these curved frames that went in front of the rail of the boxes, and it looks like a bunch of box seats. It brought back the architecture of the theater closer to the stage, so it was a nice way to connect what’s onstage with what’s in the house. It looks like it’s architecture, but it’s actually totally permeable for the sound.”
Drood may have modern sound and lights, but it feels retro because of the heavy use of backdrops and framed portals. Given the limited wing space at Studio 54 — Louizos estimated maybe five feet at stage left — using drops made things easier as they just needed to be flown in and out. There were many prop pieces including furniture, but they fit well within the space. On average, the backdrop dimensions ran 36 feet wide by 24 or 25 feet tall. The biggest challenge for the scenic designer on this show was making the set changes work in a seamless way, working with the tech director to ascertain what, if anything, needed to be automated to make the swift transitions happen.
“In most cases, with the way the show is structured, we generally have the show curtain come in, and the chairman speaks to the audience, then he describes the next scene,” says Louizos. “At least we have that premise set up early on in the show so that the audience expects that when the show curtain comes in, invariably what they’re going to see next is something new. It gives the crew a chance to set up the scenes from one to the next. It’s great. The only time we don’t do that, where we have a visible scene change, is in the train station. Toward the end of the scene, the train backs up, and we suddenly transition to the next scene. We have these irising legs that track on stage and go over the train. So as the train recedes, it disappears, and the next time the irising curtain opens up, we are in a different scene. That scene change is something that the audience got to see. It was very quick and kind of a nice trick to the eye because it looked as though the train disappeared, and suddenly the next time you see the iris open up, we are on the street of the town.”
Scenic Layers
Louizos says that, generally, all the scenes had at least two layers of scenery. “There was either a framed portal — the convent had the windows, the open arches and the entrance, and upstage the painted, translucent drop — but there’s also a portal in front of that with wood paneling that frames that scene. Even with the train station, there are two layers. There are two cutaway arches of the train station, then the upstage one with another painted, translucent archway with some framing.” Plus the front of a train with lights, an essentially flat piece that, thanks to lighting and effects, feels like a real train moving forward towards the audience for a few seconds.
The large dining room set that appears, complete with high backed chairs and windows with mullions, includes painted drops with some dimensionality. Louizos points out that, for the living room drop, the ceiling is all painted in perspective. “It’s totally flat, but the fireplace is a build-up for the mantle so we could put some dimensional things in there. Some of the paintings on the wall are actually framed paintings, but some of them are totally painted on. I wanted to blend the two worlds so that we would tip our hats to the 19th century, but, also knowing that it’s a 21st century audience, I wanted them to be able to absorb the scene and not become conscious of the fact that it’s painted scenery and be distracted by it. I wanted them to embrace it.”
The dining room set showcases Louizos’ cleverness with details. There is a doorway upstage left in the corner that is an archway and not part of the flat. As everyone knows, when actors open and close a door in a flat, it makes that part of the set shake. “I decided it would be better to create a little door unit vestibule, and it doubles as the crypt in a later scene in the graveyard,” she revealed. “That’s the reverse side of that alcove. We created a double-sided piece of scenery.”
The graveyard is a fun set as well, combining two-dimensional painted scenery — translucent with the moon backlit, and back painted so that opaque areas make the building in the background appear solid. The windows are translucent, the crypt three-dimensional and the flat painted gravestones feature carved detail on top.
“It was a lot of fun working on this,” says Louizos. “I never had to paint so many drops in my life. It was really a challenge, because I could have easily chosen to do Photoshop versions of everything, but I really wanted it to feel authentic and wanted the scenery to represent something that was unique to this production. I did a lot of research, but I drew out every single drop, and I painted all the paint elevations. The artists at the scene shops who painted these drops were so excited to paint scenery again, because they don’t get a chance to do it very often. It was like being in grad school again. I was painting paint elevations all summer.”
Not Necessarily Literal
From this entire experience, Louizos says she learned that audiences can really appreciate something that evokes a place. “It doesn’t have to be literal on stage,” she says. “You can evoke an atmosphere, you can evoke a place and a time without screaming every detail scenically. I think the opium den is a perfect example where there’s the flagged portal that is cut, painted muslin, but it suggested the dark corners of the opium den, and the painted drop was totally flat. It was not dimensional in any way, but I think it worked. It created the atmosphere of a mysterious basement opium den. I think the audiences love to be engaged in that way. It gives them a chance to use their imagination and go on the ride with the show. They get to pretend too.”
In working with lighting designer Brian Nason, she learned that an LD could put less light and color on certain things to bring out what was already there. If there was a lot of color on a drop that she could not see, he start taking away some of the color in the lights to reveal the color of the drop. “Depending on the gels and colors you chose, you could either enhance or obliterate the colors that were on the stage,” observes Louizos. “For both of us, it was a process of discovery, and was really informative. He was able to do some great, translucent effects because of the back painting of certain drops.”
The final drop seen in the show is a compilation of four main locations in the show, with the show’s title in the center, behind which some shadowplay is done. Louizos says that drop was the most challenging to create, because she and director Ellis did not know what it would be right away. The duo kept discussing a famous book cover that has The Mystery of Edwin Drood centered, surrounded by vignettes showing scenes from the book. Ellis liked the idea but wanted their version to reflect this latest show.
“He thought there should be no people in the drop, because the book cover has people, so we distilled it down to the four locations that he thought were most appropriate,” says Louizos. “So I took the images that I did on the drops and did a big pen-and-ink version of each of the previous scenes that we chose. That was challenging, but it was fun to learn a new technique — pen-and-ink versions of a painting that I had done. Then we had also to experiment with how we were going to do the shadowplay — how tall people needed to be on a platform and how to reveal the actress at the end. That all came together later on in the process, and it works very well. I’m really happy with how it turned out.”
According to Louizos, working on The Mystery of Edwin Drood was fun and very collaborative. Both Ellis and composer/lyricist Rupert Holmes were very involved in the creative process. “Having the author be a part of this was really great,” says Louizos. “He’s more familiar with the production than anyone else on Earth, because he created the entire show, so it was pretty great to be able to call him up and say, ‘What do think of this?’ or ‘How should we go about doing this?’ He wrote changes to the script. He puts some songs back in that had been taken out in previous productions.”
For more images, go to www.plsn.me/DroodExtras
