Elm Street Cultural Arts Village presents THE DROWSY CHAPERONE

A multi-talented cast came together Sunday to perform a giddy homage to the American musical in Elm Street Arts’ production of The Drowsy Chaperone by Bob Martin and Don McKellar. The show is a meta-musical and frame tale: a lonely middle-aged man, played by the charming and decidedly non-middle-aged Stephen Spainhour-Roth, sits in his living room and reminisces on the golden age of the American musical. In the hours to come he shares his love of musicals, as well as the story of loss that has landed him alone in his living room reliving the good old days. He presents to us a recording of his favorite musical, The Drowsy Chaperone, and as the LP spins the musical emerges as if by magic from his shabby apartment: bookcases swing wide to admit girls clad in the glitzy fashions of the 1920s. The refrigerator door opens and in strut two gangsters disguised as pastry chefs. An aging alcoholic starlet—the title character played by Annie Cook—emerges from the kitchen, martini in hand. The set, designed by Brad Leak, seems to have an infinite number of hiding places from which the musical cast emerge. As the record plays, the musical progresses, but as soon as the turntable stops (or starts skipping, with amusing results), the performers freeze, waiting for the Man in Chair (he goes by no other moniker) to set the needle back upon the vinyl.

With the Man in Chair as our guide the audience gets a tour of the highlights of the musical, accompanied by his acerbic commentary. The musical itself is fairly standard fare, featuring the expected unexpected complications in the course of pulling off a wedding, including mistaken identities, behind the scenes machinations, unrequited love, and, in the end, multiple couples tying the knot. What is less standard is the narrator’s ongoing commentary on the proceedings, in which he reflects on these familiar musical tropes from the standpoint of a connoisseur of the genre, and also from the standpoint of one for whom everything did not work out in the end, especially not in the domain of romance.

In keeping with the style of the 1920s musical, most of the characters are representative of various theatrical types, several of which forward stereotypes which, though common enough in their day, may prove wince-inducing on a 2018 stage. The self-awareness of Spainhour-Roth’s commentary (“You couldn’t get away with a performance like that nowadays… so we’ve banished them to Disney. Let the children sort them out!”) ends up leavening the more gauche depictions, however.

Elm Street Cultural Arts Village Assembles Young Talents

The fairly young cast comes through with a number of amusing performances. Caitlin Roe plays the starlet Janet van de Graff, and gives a delightfully exhausting performance in the big ensemble number I Don’t Wanna Show Off by cycling through just about every talent show routine ever invented. In this writer’s view this particular number is the show at its most witty and self-reflexive: “I don’t wanna change keys no more!” Janet proclaims as the music does just that. Nathan McCurry—(See disclaimer below) plays the hilariously raunchy Adolpho, a florid Spaniard who, in keeping with the aforementioned stereotypes, has only one thing on his mind. The music is where this show really shines. Berardi has assembled a cast graced with a number of fine voices, and a small but mighty chamber orchestra accompanies them with panache under the direction of Matthew Welsh.

If you are a fan of old musicals and enjoy a liberal helping of camp, The Drowsy Chaperone will be sure to tickle your fancy.

About the Author:

Dr. Derek Barton is an award-winning playwright and director and teaches theatre and performance studies at Kennesaw State University. His plays have been staged in festivals and non-profit theatres across the country, and his short films have appeared in film festivals internationally. His most recent play, The Extinction Project, was published in the journal Liminalities, and he is currently developing The Space Plays, a collection of short plays based on science fiction stories that examine the human relationship with our planet and the cosmos. He began covering the Chicago theatre scene for Picture this Post in 2016 and, since relocating to Georgia, covers theatre in the Atlanta metro area.