The Broward Stage Door cast of The Drowsy Chaperone.
By Hap Erstein
Broward Stage Door Theatre has a tendency to overreach with its musicals, biting off a beloved, not-quite elaborate show and not quite delivering on the pleasures we once enjoyed with it.
Now, however, it is presenting a modest little show, the intermission-less The Drowsy Chaperone, a multiple Tony Award winner from 2006 that is bound to be new to most of its audience, and renders it very capably with just the right touches of affection and whimsy.
Much of the credit goes to the company’s former artistic director, Dan Kelley, who stages the production deftly with a perpetual wink as well as playing the show’s central character, known simply as Man in Chair, with complete commitment to his musical comedy world. Every now and then one sees an ideal match of performer and role like this. If Man in Chair were not written as a wedding gift for Bob Martin, one of the show’s co-authors, you would swear it was tailor-made for Kelley, fluttery hands and sly comic takes and all.
You see, Man in Chair is an avid fan of musicals, preferably from an earlier era, long before they were lazy copies of popular movies or before Elton John began attempting to pen theater songs. And when he feels a little blue, nothing brings him out of his funk like putting on a record – yes, a vinyl record – of a cherished, bygone, fictitious show from the 1920s, like Gable and Stine’s The Drowsy Chaperone. And as he narrates and annotates the show, it comes to life in his otherwise drab apartment.
As students of musical theater know, shows from the ’20s were one degree removed from vaudeville, a series of specialty numbers for variety performers that were barely connected to a storyline. Dramatic logic was beside the point and that is the world that The Drowsy Chaperone – the show, not the show-within-the-show – celebrates.
The plot, such as it is, concerns the imminent wedding of celebrated stage star Janet Van De Graff, who is about to make the supreme sacrifice of giving up her career for domestic life with her beau, Robert Martin. Trying to prevent the nuptials is her producer, who would hate to lose such a lucrative meal ticket.
For no particular reason other than daffiness, the groom is soon careening about the stage, blindfolded and on roller skates. Perhaps it is a metaphor for marriage. In any rate, the stage is soon filled with pun-slinging gangsters posing as bakers, the title tipsy matron charged with looking after the bride, a dense, but harmless Latin Lothario, a ditsy dowager prone to spit takes and a few other stray comic types.
The Tony-winning score by Broadway newcomers Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison is well attuned to the sound of the period and highly democratic in the way it provides everyone – even a barnstorming aviatrix, so tangential to the show, she should have bought a ticket to get in – with a spotlight number.
Among the standouts are Laura Oldman (Janet), who opening anti-want song, Show-Off, puts her through a dizzying display of narcissistic talents, from plate-spinning to snake-charming to ventriloquism. Matt Ban’s Adolpho is, by necessity, broad, but he earns his laughs with surprisingly precise comic timing. And Kelley is truly ideal as Man in Chair, holding together the mayhem with an effortless hand while supplying the show’s emotional heart.
The ever-inventive Chrissi Ardito supplies the vintage feel-good choreography, Ardean Landhuis gives solid support with his scenic design and lighting and David Nagy’s music direction is adroit, although the orchestra is pre-recorded.
The Drowsy Chaperone is not a great show for the ages. It seems unlikely that Man in Chair’s great-grandson will be listening to it 80 years from now. But it is a lot of fun, and Kelley’s production delivers on every wacky bit of schtick it contains.
THE DROWSY CHAPERONE, Broward Stage Door Theatre, 8036 W. Sample Road, Coral Springs. Through July 25. Tickets: $38-$42. Call: (954) 344-7765.