edwin drood

One of the best things about being a grown-up with grown-up friends who have grown-up families and growing-up children, is that occasionally, if one is a very, very good little grown-up, one gets invited to High School theatre.

This is not to be mistaken for middle school theatre, which occasionally involves Orphan Annie (ubiquitous fat-headed Pollyanna that she is), or elementary school theatre, which always involves Snoopy. High School theatre is of a class all by itself, with High School voices and High School enthusiasm that's unmatched anywhere in the drug-free world. Too, there are High Schools and then there are High Schools, each endowed with its own share of vocal and thespian talent. My own High School was notable for having a good dozen drama students who couldn't sing, and another dozen choral students who couldn't act. This led to artistic dilemmas for our Drama Teacher, who was invariably faced with the choice of putting on musicals where the leading lady and leading man could either sing like neutered penguins being slowly strangled by small, bald-testicled Scotsmen, or act like Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves.

What usually resulted was a combination of the two, a singing leading lady partnered with an acting leading man and vice versa, for two rotating casts. This worked out well for musicals such as Grease, which everybody has seen as a movie and therefore demands the lowest expectations. On those rare occasions that she managed to find someone who could both sing and act, the Drama Teacher usually became so agitated she would lose her grip and render up a serving of Hamlet: Part Two, the Musical.

San Francisco is fortunate in that it is the site of one of the worst public school districts in the civilized world. "Pish posh," you're probably thinking. "Don't be silly. I happen to live in the worst school district in the civilized world." Of course, you're entitled to your own opinions. A couple of years ago, the San Francisco School Board discovered to their dismay that approximately a good third -- or maybe even a half -- of the high school seniors that year would not qualify to graduate due to low test scores and failure to meet the standards for graduation. Becoming alarmed that holding back these seniors would cause classrooms to become over-overcrowded and strain the already stretched resources of the public school system, the Board determined that the best solution would be to lower the standards for graduation and let them graduate.

It's this kind of Thinking Outside the Box that's needed in this world today. If you can match that story with another one equally as bad, I will publically acknowledge your public school district as bad, or inferior, to ours.

Anyway, San Francisco's public school system is a byword for mediocrity, so it's become the practice of San Francisco parents who have the money to enroll their students in private schools. Private schools, having both the means and the inclination to target their agendas towards specific subjects, usually have some sort of speciality: science, the arts, etcetera. The youngest son of my friend goes to Grace Cathedral school for boys, where he sings in the famous Grace Cathedral choir. The eldest goes to Lick-Wilmerding High School, specializing in arts, where once every two years, an ambitious musical production is staged for the delight of parents and family and friends.

Thus it was that on Thursday night, I trucked myself up to San Francisco to see the opening night of "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," by Rupert Holmes, based on an unfinished story by Charles Dickens.

This is not a Normal Musical. I should've expected that when I recognized Rupert Holmes' name on the program, otherwise celebrated in the Yuhri household for having created the series "Remember WENN."

It's been a while since I've been to a high school musical, and I hadn't realized how much things had changed. When I was in high school, for instance, the principal and PTA would have had a coronary if the students had put on a musical in which the word "shit" was written into the music. They would have objected to high school girls playing the parts of prostitutes and propositioning members of the audience, conservatives that they were. Considering they even had difficulty with the musical "Grease", believing it to be subversive and unnecessarily provocative, they would most certainly have had some serious issues with "The Mystery of Edwin Drood."

The premise of this musical is that it's based on the last story written by Charles Dickens, a mystery -- no certainty whether it's a murder mystery or not -- about a young man who suddenly disappears. In the cast of characters: a young woman named Rosa Bud, a treacherous though publically affectionate uncle in love with young Rosa named John Jasper, young and hot-tempered Edwin Drood who plans on building highways through Egypt using stones taken from pyramids, and hot-blooded Egyptian Neville Landless. There's also Reverend Crisparkle who was once engaged to Rosa Bud's mother (until the tragic night when she mysteriously chose to go for a moonlight walk across some treacherous cliffs and fell to her Doom in the waters below), and Princess Puffer, who runs an opium den in London.

Yes, well, it was the Victorian Era. What can you do.

The play was hilarious; I laughed immoderately, at length, and loudly, embarrassing everybody around me. I don't remember being so perky in high school. Neither do I remember being so talented, and I don't just say that because the son of my friend played John Jasper. Since Charles Dickens dropped down dead in the course of writing the play, it required audience participation to arbitrarily select those characters responsible for the surmised death of Edwin Drood, as well as a happy ending. All musicals are required to have a happy ending, involving two characters in a love duet. For the purposes of this musical, the audience selected the opium den owner and the Reverend Crisparkle, evidently feeling that an opium den owner who could sing the word "Shit" and a Reverend who wore bright red glitter on his collar deserved each other.

Need I say it? I enjoyed myself hugely. I'd give a, well, not a lot, but something, to see the musical performed by professionals with a professional budget and setting. After all, it's from the same person who brought us "Remember WENN." How could we lose?