An Enjoyably Classy Musical Murder

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Peck School of the Arts 'Mystery of Edwin Drood'

The cast of the UWM Peck School of the Arts’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood is impeccably poised. Finely dressed young actors filter into the audience before the show welcoming everyone before it all gets started. Before long the pianist and the master of ceremonies appear and things get started. It’s a very cordial social and musical introduction to a stage performance of the last thing that Charles Dickens ever wrote.

A massing black silhouette serves as backdrop. Aside from the fancy dress, there isn’t much to lock-in the atmosphere of the show.  Director Bill Watson doesn’t need a whole lot of flashy production, though. He has a large, attractive cast playing to the phantom energies of an old English music hall atmosphere. The cast quickly rolls through plot elements in a grand, unfinished mystery. Actors play characters who are actors playing characters. The familiar elements of a standard murder mystery gradually begin to reveal themselves between occasionally moving and powerful songs with light piano accompaniment.

Watson is working with two casts. “Piccadilly” and “Kensington” perform on alternating nights. Local theater star Raeleen McMillion captivatingly plays the head of an opium den in the Piccadilly Cast. McMillion’s performance of “The Wages of Sin.” The dapper cast lounges around passed out as McMillion charmingly engages in a haunting, little melody. McMillion’s “The Wages of Sin” aids in a warm performance atmosphere that leads irrevocably to the final moments involving the disappearance of Drood and the aftermath. Watson and company do a clever job of drawing-in the audience to help to vote for the one who committed the crime of Drood’s disappearance.

UWM Peck School of the Arts’ production of The Mystery of Edwin Drood runs through Oct. 23 at Mainstage Theatre, 2400 E. Kenwood Blvd. For ticket reservations, visit UWM PSOA online.