Bringing The Mystery of Edwin Drood to the stage

The Mystery of Edwin Drood is famously Charles Dickens’ final and unfinished novel.

Company and audience will combine to take it through to an ending when second-year triple-threat students from the University of Chichester bring it to the stage from Thursday, November 19-Saturday, November 21 at 7.30pm each evening plus a 2.30pm matinee performance on Saturday, November 21 at the University’s Assembly Theatre in Bognor Regis.

Olivia Barton is playing Edwin Drood himself, a charming, wealthy, young man who mysteriously vanishes on Christmas Eve – a role traditionally played by a female lead-impersonator. Naomi Hartley is Rosa Bud, a young and fragile music student, engaged to Edwin, but often pursued by another character named John Jasper.

They are loving the experience – and their time at the University of Chichester generally.

Naomi, aged 19 from Buckinghamshire, said: “I really loved the in-person audition to begin with that you get here. The majority of auditions are online where you send off self-tapes but I just liked the connection that you get here. I was very nervous but the audition went very well, and I'm so happy to be here.”

There is a great campus environment: “There are so many other courses and that allows you to see different people, and it is also good to be involved with all the different things like the Student Union and all the societies.”

Olivia, also aged 19, and from Malvern, feels similarly home in Chichester: “I applied because I just loved the feel at the university. I was not originally going to go into musical theatre. I was going to go into media and journalism but I really enjoyed the fact that this is very much a university and very much still an education and not just practice. I think there's a warm feeling to the university. I think this place just feels so much more homely and so much more me. I've gained so much confidence. I know everyone says that but I genuinely do feel so much more confident now. It's about the tutors and their experience and just about learning so much more about the industry. Everyone is so passionate about it here.”

Naomi agrees: “The connection that we have with the tutors is just great and they all really know the industry. And it’s great to come up against other people that are as good as you are or even better, and in a way that keeps you humble. It's a great place to train.”

As Olivia says: “This is a play within a play. It is set at the Theatre Royal and it's a theatre company and cast that are staging Edwin Drood. We all play at least two characters. We are actors that are in the show and we are also the characters that are playing them. My character is an actress called Alice who is a renowned male impersonator which was very new at the time, and she is playing Edwin Drood who is very arrogant and confident and theatrical and assured of himself!”

Naomi is playing Deirdre who is playing Rosa: “Deirdre is quite flamboyant and quite flirty. She's a very contradictory character to Rosa who is 17 years old and quite naive and quite innocent. It will be a good contrast between the two.”