抄録
This paper will question the ideal of integration of song, dance, and story in the Broadway musical and re-evaluate the dramatic importance of musical numbers therein by means of an analysis of The Mystery of Edwin Drood (or Drood; first produced 1986), a musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’s unfinished novel of the same name. The show became a critical and commercial success and won that year’s Tony Award for Best Musical. However, because the adaptation of the novel was conceived as a show-within-a-show in its performance at London’s Music Hall Royale, with the murderer chosen by audience vote, Drood is referred to as “unfaithful” to its source in some reviews.
Moreover, the musical is unfaithful to the ideal of the integrated musical. While integrated musicals aim to unify story, song and dance into a seamless whole, Drood’s performance is repeatedly interrupted. The show stops abruptly in the middle of the musical number “Don’t Quit While You’re Ahead,” as it reaches the point where the original story ceases due to the untimely death of its author. This scene suggests that, while reviews and previous studies focus on the narrative of Drood and the conceptual nature of its adaptation, the musical is in fact a story of the actors of the Music Hall Royale and their desire to perform through the interruption, the diversion, and the vote on the murderer and other roles.
In Drood, the songs are not the “servant” of the play, as in integrated musicals. Instead, the performance of musical numbers is the focus of the show. As the character Drood sings, “if you hear my voice, then you’re alive”; and the goal of the actors is to achieve mutual affirmation of their lives through singing. Thus, the musical numbers in Drood bear unique dramatic meaning.
