‘Drood’ Creator Holmes--Musical’s a Mystery to Him

As the creator of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” the 1986 Tony-winning musical, Rupert Holmes is one Holmes who prefers to let you solve the murder for him.

When “Drood” bows tonight at Plummer Auditorium in Fullerton, Holmes won’t know the identity of the killer until the audience figures it out. And he is venturing no predictions.

“I used to sit in the audience and watch the show on Broadway,” he said Wednesday by telephone from Pasadena, “and I used to think I could predict the reaction. But I found out, you just don’t know about people.”

Will the murderer be the good reverend or the sweet nubile thing with the golden curls? The madam of the opium den or the exotic young man from Ceylon? His seductive twin sister or the honorable mayor? The drunken gravedigger or the diabolical choirmaster?

Since Charles Dickens didn’t solve the mystery, having died of a stroke in 1870 while writing the novel on which the musical is loosely based, Holmes decided it would be presumptuous to pin down a single solution. So he created a handful for the audience to choose from.

All very ingenious for a first-time theater writer whose previous experience consisted largely of working in the record industry as a free-lance producer (for Barbra Streisand), jingle composer and would-be pop star with several albums and a few Top 40 hits to his credit, including the 1979 chart-topper “Escape (The Pina Colada Song).”

“I always felt there were other things in life besides the record business,” said Holmes, 41, whose second (nonmusical) whodunit, “Accomplice,” premiered Tuesday at the Pasadena Playhouse. “I knew I had some things to say that couldn’t be told in 3 minutes with a fade ending. Actually, I hate pina coladas. They’re like Kaopectate with Perrier. But it was the right number of syllables.”

As a singer-songwriter, Holmes was dubbed everything from “the thinking man’s Barry Manilow” to an “Episcopalian Woody Allen”--dismissive labels, of course. Yet Holmes, who was born in England, raised in a suburb of New York City and is half-Jewish, remains unfazed.

He even agrees that they are accurate up to a point as “wonderful catch phrases.” They provide, he said, “quick handles on how I made humor out of my neuroses and how I made pop songs that were pleasant to listen to but respected your intelligence.”

It wasn’t until 1983 that Holmes turned to the musical stage at the invitation of Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival. Two years later, “Drood” opened in Central Park and gained an avid following. In December, 1985, it transferred to Broadway, where it became a long-running smash and swept five Tonys--including best musical, best libretto and best score.

“When I first tried to write ‘Drood,’ everything came out dark and somber,” said Holmes, who penned the score, the lyrics and the libretto. “It was because the Dickens novel is so Gothic and intense. I worked for days, and I thought, ‘This is warmed-over Wagner.’ I had to ask myself how I can make it entertaining? I realized then that it had to be done as a bit of a sendup.”

Instead of re-creating the actual Dickens mystery, why not have a troupe of Victorian music-hall players act it out? Spoof the players as hams, who in true British music-hall fashion will go to any length to pamper the audience for love and applause. “That way,” Holmes explained, “I could set up the melodrama and the overacting as a play within a frame. And when we got to the point in the story where Dickens wrote no more, then the audience still would have the personalities of the players to deal with. Because everybody in the company plays a music-hall trouper, as well as a Dickens character.”

During “Drood’s” 2-year Broadway run, audiences formed fan clubs around particular characters, he said. It became such a point of pride to be chosen either the murderer or the detective-in-disguise or one of the lovers needed to complete the story that the actors began to lobby the crowd for votes--a device incorporated into the show.

At a time when special effects have come to dominate the Broadway musical, Holmes takes pride in “Drood’s” complete lack of them. “We don’t rely on lasers or roller skates,” he said, alluding to the mega-hits “Starlight Express” and “The Phantom of the Opera” in particular.

“The biggest special effect in ‘Drood’ is its spontaneity,” he noted. “This show relies on the actors’ relationship with the audience, which is what theater is really all about. ‘Phantom’ is fabulous if you’ve never seen a Michael Jackson show. But I come from rock ‘n’ roll. So I’m not impressed by lasers and smoke machines.”

“Drood” has proven so successful that the company staging it in Fullerton (for one night only) has been able to tour the country over the past 9 months “without need of a celebrity star,” Holmes said. In St. Louis, it even played to 14,000 people in a single performance. (“The audience voted as sort of an electoral college.”)

Moreover, the show is so well-traveled--this is the second national road company in 2 years--that Holmes calls it “the Rand McNally of theater.” Foreign companies also have toured such far-flung places as Australia and Sweden, he says. Japan is next.

Closer to home, “Accomplice” opened to positive reviews Tuesday and on Wednesday broke the Pasadena Playhouse’s one-day record for ticket sales. “I’m thrilled,” Holmes said. “That play represents the last half-year of my work.”

But it is hardly all he’s been doing. Holmes has begun collaborating with Tommy Tune on another musical, tentatively called “Swing,” about the Big Band era of the ‘40s.

Nor has he given up the record business. He wrote a hit for the Jets last year--”You’ve Got It All”--and he is working with Barbra Streisand on a sequel to her “Broadway” album. It has the project title of “Back to Broadway.”

“We’ve got a 65-piece orchestra,” Holmes said. “Six or seven sides are done. But when we’ll complete the album, I have no idea.”

“The Mystery of Edwin Drood” plays today at Plummer Auditorium, 201 E. Chapman Ave., Fullerton, as part of Cal State Fullerton’s Professional Artists in Residence series, in association with New York-based Musical Theater Associates. Curtain: 8 p.m. Tickets: $17.50 and $12.50. Information: (714) 773-2434.