And with Kristy Cruz’s delightful choreography, under Jordan Cooper’s full-speed-ahead direction, there is never a dull moment on stage. As such, this show is a high-wire balancing act of sorts, with actors having to perform intentionally bad production numbers well, play purposefully broad characters with realistic intent and sell outmoded wordplay, silly slapstick and an excess of spit-takes as if vaudeville were alive and well.įortunately, this production and these players do everything right with what is intended to be so very wrong and manage to deliver a very entertaining musical within a crazy comedy. Together, they recreate their classic production as our effusive host offers us a running color commentary about the musical theater of the period, this show in particular, and the private lives of the old-time actors who appeared in it.īob Martin and Dan McKellar’s 2006 Tony Award-winning “The Drowsy Chaperone,” with music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison, is a thoroughly enchanting meta-theatrical musical that pokes great fun at the very artform it is embracing. Polk) and his airheaded arm-candy (Meg Martinez) a ditzy dowager (Kate Leigh Michalski) and her stoic butler (Brian Altman) an aviatrix (Sara Danielle Chapman) a foreign heartthrob (Trey Gilpin) and two hard-nosed but soft-in-the-middle gangsters (Anthony Savage-Williams and Adam Patterson). It is populated with period Great White Way archetypes that include a beautiful starlet (Kaylea Kudlaty), who is giving up fame to marry a rich, self-infatuated playboy (Adam Rawlings) her hard-drinking and perpetually drowsy chaperone (Amiee Collier) the playboy’s best friend (Andrew Keller) a manipulative Broadway producer (John J. : a person in the past who went with a young unmarried woman to social events in order to. I was a chaperone on one of my son's school trips. US : someone (such as a teacher or parent) who goes with children on a trip or to a school dance to make sure that the children behave properly. When he does, his drab apartment transforms into a Broadway stage and the madcap musical miraculously comes to life. Britannica Dictionary definition of CHAPERONE. And his favorite is Gable and Stein’s “The Drowsy Chaperone,” which he offers to play for us on an old turntable.

He is talking directly to the audience gathered at French Creek Theatre in Sheffield Village, adding that he particularly hates plays that break the fourth wall.īut when he’s a little blue, he tells us, he likes to listen to original vinyl cast recordings of 1920s musicals, with their catchy showtunes, predictable plots and cookie-cutter characters. “I hate theater,” says a frumpy, effeminate, middle-aged man (Jonathan Kronenberger) from his comfy center stage chair at the start of this play.

Chaperone definition french