The Drowsy Chaperone
The Drowsy Chaperone
Book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar
Music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison
Directed by Bob Brandenburg
Musical Direction by Lulu Picart
Starring Steven Lane, Michelle Knight, Chris Burns, Andrea Stack
Mad Cow Theatre, Orlando, FL</strong>
“Dear God” we pray as the lights go down “Please don’t let this suck too much.” Implicit in this invocation is request for a well chosen script, lines completely memorized and clearly interpreted, an interesting set and no iPhones in the vicinity. We join the Man In The Chair (Lane) as he drags out an old soundtrack LP, put sit on the Crosley record player, and enjoins us to listen to the pre show pops and scratches – it’s a time machine to 1920’s piece of fluff that has fascinated him since his mother gave him the sound track. We join his reminisces as he helpfully points out the nearly invisible plot: “it’s bad luck for the groom Robert Martin to see the Bride Janet Van De Graff on their wedding day.” And what more do we need with ditzy aunts and creepy gangsters and an alcoholic chaperone to fill in the action between songs?
Most of those old shows don’t really hold up, and where Drowsy excels is in applying a bit of deconstruction to the process, editing out the slow spots and mocking the particularly egregious badness. This just leaves some very well constructed songs including “As We Stumble Along” by the woozy boozy Drowsy Chaperone (Knight), the slapstick “Toledo Surprise” from the Gangsters (Jamie Lowe and Ashland Thomas) and the Producer Feldzieg (Billy Flanigan), “An Accident Waiting to Happen” by the happy couple (Burns and Stack) and the ridiculously funny “I Am Adolpho” from Adolpho (David Bracamonte) and the Chaperone. All of these ghosts flow from the closet center stage, and while Man In Chair declaims he hates when theaters break the fourth wall, that’s all he is – a device that waits for us to sit down waves at us preshow, and find himself trapped in the theater even as we leave.
Part old time hoofer number, part modern self-referential comedy, there’s bales of laughs here from endless spit takes to suggestive names (Percy Hyman) to blindfold roller-skating. A small band lurks backstage, Music Director Lulu Picart’s head float behind the bar as a sort of surreal side show to the main event. There’s even a big blowout number lead by Trix, The Aviatrix (Seandrea Earls) as the cast recreates her crashed airship out of spinning umbrellas and feather boas as they parody a big “Flying Down to Rio” number even Fred Astaire would be embarrassed to admit he was in.
This is the year of Double Productions, and another version of this show opens soon. I can’t say anything about the competion yet, but if you pick this pricey ticket you will get all the entertainment value you paid for.
For more information on Mad Cow, please visit http://www.madcowtheatre.com
