Rule No. 1 for any production of “The Drowsy Chaperone” is the presence of a great Man in Chair.
If you’re not familiar with the 2010 musical with the book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar, and music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison, the said narrating character is a Broadway obsessive of a certain age, the kind of fan who has six different cast recordings and could engage in conversation with you about any of the nuances therein.
In the show, now at Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre in Chicago, you are are invited into Man in Chair’s apartment where he plays for you his vinyl recording of the entire old-school musical comedy known as “The Drowsy Chaperone,” offering up his own critical analyses, background observations and other liner notes, delivered live and in person as the show unspools around him and the performers invade both his head and his apartment.
Happily, director L. Walter Stearns’ production has such a Man in Chair in the form of Steve McDonagh. He’s actually a dead ringer for the former New York Times critic Ben Brantley, which, come to think of it, is rather deliciously apropos. More importantly, McDonagh gets what Martin and McKellar’s excellent book was going for: an empathetic, sad-sack superfan, to some degree, but also a man who understands both self-deprecating humor and the simple joy of escaping your loneliness inside the world of musicals, a joy to which I can fully attest. I’ve seen a few Men in Chairs in my time and I have some similarities with the type myself. McDonagh gets it just right. It’s a fabulous central performance.
“The Drowsy Chaperone” is a very funny musical in its geeky, meta kind of way. Back in its day, it struck most of us as a highly original show; Martin’s comic writing was at its peak in its creation. A decade or so ago, it was being produced everywhere, but that has not been so much the case in recent years and there have been no major recent productions in Chicagoland. So that makes its return at Theo all the more welcome, especially since I have all these fond memories of how half the audience at the first Broadway production seemed to think “The Drowsy Chaperone” was a real golden-age musical, rather than material made up entirely out of whole cloth. Such is the cleverness of the writing.
Stearns’ immersive, non-Equity production imagines Man in Chair’s apartment as the entire theater; one section of the audience finds itself seated at his kitchen table, which adds to the fun as various ingenues, sirens and handsome leading men come bursting through the door as the vinyl spins at the side. One of the dangers with this particular title is that actors overplay, thinking that the show-within-a-show and period style offer some license in that direction. Not true, say I, and that’s the occasional weakness of this particular staging as actors sometimes forget that the inner show has to be as credible and truthful as the outer frame. Otherwise, Man in Chair would not have such love for the title.
That said, some strong performers come bursting into the kitchen, including the two leads, Kelsey MacDonald, playing a demanding, triple-threat part first written for Sutton Foster, and Trey Plutnicki, every inch the strong-jawed Broadway bachelor. Colette Todd is very funny in the title role and I was similarly tickled by Darian Goulding’s Aldolpho, not least because Goulding held tight to the reins of what is a trickily stereotypical character. Choreographer Jenna Schoppe hardly has a full company of dancers here, but she comes up with a witty little suite of movement, nonetheless.
“The Drowsy Chaperone,” as Man in Chair keeps reminding us, is pure escapism. It’s also a tribute to the sheer pleasure of Broadway musicals, especially those from the era when you didn’t have to take out a second mortgage to buy a ticket.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
Review: “The Drowsy Chaperone” (3 stars)
When: Through April 19
Where: Theo Ubique Theatre, 921 Howard St., Evanston
Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes
Tickets: $33-$66 at 773-939-4101 and theo-u.com
