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The Drowsy Chaperone is a musical based on a book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar. Lisa Lambert and Greg Morisson wrote its lyrics. It was debuted in 2001 at the Fringe Festival and on Broadway on May 1, 2006.The Drowsy Chaperone is performed as a tribute to the American musicals of the Jazz Age. It begins with a man, a Broadway fan, sitting depressed in his chair listening to the recording of a 1928 stage show, The Drowsy Chaperone. To him the static is the sound of a time machine starting that will transport him into the bliss of a magical world where an actor in the recording enters his shabby apartment decorated with seashell footlights, sparkly peacocks, glittery sugarplum trees and amazing costumes.
The Drowsy Chaperone is the story of an actress who has decided to marry a man she just met. She is a valuable asset for her gold digging producer who doesnt want to lose her. From here on the story is pithily clichd in that it includes twists and turns such as mistaken identity, spit-takes, and gangsters on the lam, involving such campy characters as an all-knowing English butler, a Latino lothario, and a daffy, cart wheeling heroine. The man is undecided between his desire to every second of the plays story as it unfolds and to give it his own personal twists brining the spectator in and out of the world of his imagination.
Buy tickets to the drowsy chaperone, the drowsy chaperone broadway tickets, the drowsy chaperone theatre tickets sale and the drowsy chaperone musical show tour schedule. The show was introduced in 1999 when McKellar, Lambert, and Morrison threw a parody of musicals for the wedding of their friends Bob Martin and Janet Van De Graaff. The first performance was different from the later versions in that the musicals in the first performance ranged from the era of the 1920s to the 1940s, the jokes were more ribald and there was no Man in Chair. Bob Martin joined the show as a co-author when the producers decided to refine the story and other aspects of the play for the Toronto Fringe Festival. This is precisely how the Man in Chair came into being; he was to serve as the narrator/commentator for the piece.
The Drowsy Chaperone, produced, directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw opened on Broadway in May 2006 after 36 previews. It ran at the Marquis Theatre until December 2007 after 674 performances. The cast of the Broadway plays included Bob Martin, Sutton Foster, Georgia Engel, Edward Hibbert, Beth Leavel, Jason Kravits, Garth Kravits and Danny Burstein.The Drowsy Chaperone started its national tour in September 2007 in Toronto at the Elgin Theatre. The cast included some of the Broadway actors including Bob Martin and Georgia Engel, who played the Man in Chair and Mrs. Tottendale, respectively. The first translated production of the play will open in Japan in 2008 or 2009.The Drowsy Chaperone captured the attention of Broadway producer Kevin McCollum at a reading for the New Yorks National Alliance for Musical Theatre organized by Canadian actor and fund-raiser Paul Mack. McCollum teamed up with Miller and the other producers including Bob Boyett, Stephanie McClelland, Barbara Freitag and Jill Furman to produce and direct the play.
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