A cross between a parlor game, a Victorian melodrama, and a British Music Hall production, ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'' has entertained and intrigued audiences since it premiered to critical acclaim at the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1985. Those who appreciate these theatrical traditions will be delighted by the current Pennsylvania Playhouse production, too.

A play within a play, the show revolves around the efforts of a Victorian acting troupe to put on a show inspired by an unfinished novel by Charles Dickens. John Jasper, the Jekyll-and-Hyde choirmaster, is infatuated with Miss Rosa Bud, a music student who has been betrothed from birth to Jasper's nephew, Edwin Drood. One dark and stormy night, young Drood vanishes. Was he murdered? How did he die?

In the best tradition of the British Music Hall, the events are emceed by a ''Chairman,'' a flamboyant Bill Mutimer, who finds himself suddenly playing a part in Drood when one of the actors is too drunk to go on. There is also the standard music hall character of a seduced and abandoned woman, in this case the proprietor of a London opium den, Princess Puffer, nimbly played by Cheryl Burke. And there is the Principal Boy, who is actually a woman impersonating a man, in this case, Drood. A petite Lori Sivick plays the male impersonator, Miss Alice Nutting, with comic diligence.

It's hard to imagine a better performance (or more Byronic vocalizations) than the one Robert Callan delivered as Jasper. Carolyn Shemwell plays Miss Bud to virtuous perfection. Bradley Gunn's spoof on a Ceylon native, Neville Lanless, is hysterically funny, although perhaps not politically correct.

The actors interact with audience members, as if the audience members are regulars who know their repertoires and reputations. And we do. Most are local performers.

To watch the show is to experience what theater was like before musicals became stage versions of movies with cinematic set designs and special effects and production value distanced theatergoers from the actors. Good, thing, too. The Pennsylvania Playhouse budget doesn't allow for elaborate sets, though there are some nice flourishes, including a steaming train.

An energetic, though off-stage, band adds to the music hall ambience. Alas, it sometimes overwhelmed the singers. The music is difficult. The solos, especially, demand a lot from the performer's voices, which, by the end of the production, started to flag.

A play within a play, actors who are characters playing characters, ad libs, jokes, asides — if all of this sounds a bit challenging to keep track of, it is. So is the ending. The original novel ends mid-sentence — the point at which Dickens died. So each night, theater audiences get to decide the outcome. No doubt Dickens, the master of serial cliff-hangers, would approve.

''The Mystery of Edwin Drood,'' 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday, through Oct. 26, Pennsylvania Playhouse, Illick's Mill Road, Bethlehem. Tickets: $18; $15, seniors, children 11 and under and all seats on Saturday. 610-865-6665.

Marguerite Smolen is a freelance writer.

Jodi Duckett,

Arts and Entertainment Editor

jodi.duckett@mcall.com

610-820-6704

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