WTCI is turning a new page in its fundraising efforts with “A Taste of Mystery.”
In doing so, the Chattanooga-based Public Broadcasting System television station in conjunction with Bang-A-Rang Productions will offer three performances of the Tony Award-winning musical “Drood” at the Museum Center at Five Points in Cleveland, Tenn.
It will be paired with dinner tonight and Saturday night and with dessert for a matinee performance Saturday afternoon.
“We like to get out into the community and meet our viewers and learn more about what kind of programming, what kind of education resources, they want,” said Amanda Plecas, director of public relations for the station. “This is something fun and entertaining and unique.”
“Drood,” based on the unfinished Charles Dickens novel “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” is staged where the audience by its vote chooses the ending of the show.
“It’s really cool,” said Plecas. “It involves something like 47 different combinations, and the actors are having to learn all the different combinations of endings. You don’t know what the audience is going to pick.”
IF YOU GO* What: “A Taste of Mystery.”* When: 6 p.m. today, 1 and 6 p.m. Saturday.* Where: Museum Center at Five Points, 200 E. Inman St., Cleveland, Tenn.* Admission: $75 per person (dinner/show); $35 per person (dessert/show).* Phone: 702-7800.* Website: www.wtciTV.org/events/a-taste-of-mystery.
The musical, written by Rupert “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” Holmes based on Dickens’ work, is essentially a play within a play.
It opens with the Music Hall Royale, a loony Victorian troupe, staging its flamboyant rendition of an unfinished Dickens mystery. In the mystery, John Jasper, a Jekyll-and-Hyde choirmaster, is madly in love with his music student, Rosa Bud. Bud is, in turn, engaged to Jasper’s nephew, Edwin Drood. Then Drood mysteriously disappears one stormy Christmas Eve. The questions remain: Has he been murdered? And if so, by whom?
The two evening performances begin with a cocktail hour at 6, dinner prepared by Cleveland’s Café Roma at 7 and the musical at 7:45. Doors open at 1 p.m. for the matinee, with coffee and desserts served with the 1:30 p.m. performance.
Plecas said the event involves “a lot of really great talent — actors, singers and musicians” — who are volunteering their time.
“We’re just amazed at the generosity of everybody involved,” said Plecas. “Everybody has given so much of their time. It’s been amazing with the holidays and the snow. We feel lucky to pull all of this off. It’s going to be fun.”