Vintage Assessments

Four Stars Out of Five
Highly Recommended by Michael Vaughan
(Editor of Time Out & National Post Columnist)
An Independent, Unpaid & Unsolicited Review

The Drowsy Chaperone
Something Delicious To Nibble On!

To July 28, Tuesday to Sunday - Tickets $41 to $75
Winter Garden Theatre • 189 Yonge Street, Toronto
Telephone: 416-872-1212

Let me be absolutely clear about this. I loved The Drowsy Chaperone thanks to some wonderful performances, which saved it from being just a schlocky musical. And this was the second time I saw it! Not that all the performances were necessarily better than the earlier rendition at Theatre Passe Muraille. The chaperone, for instance, was much less campy - her role seems to have been toned down a notch too much. Nor was the new set a stunner – simply a series of white doors on black. I also feel compelled to mention the significantly higher prices (up to $75 for the best seats on Friday & Saturday) compared $15-$40 at the Main Space. Of course, the Winter Garden Theatre is the perfect venue for this performance. Finally there’s the issue of no intermission, well at least not for the audience. Personally, I didn’t miss it – but then I was prepared!

It was the campy fun and frivolity of it all – the deliciously silly story which captured my imagination. Indeed, almost every conceivable musical theatre cliché has been played to the hilt. Key to the action was the narrator who initiates a pre-curtain dialogue with the waiting audience in the dark. He recounts the dread facing some theatregoers, usually subscribers who attend, often begrudgingly, with their partners.

Relax. It will be a few minutes yet. Not quite ready. Just relax. Enjoy the peace and quite. Pray. Pray that you won’t be disappointed, that’s what I do when I’m sitting in the dark waiting for a show to begin. I pray. Dear God, please let it be a good show. Lord, I don’t get out much and remember I paid $15 for parking. $15. Ridiculous, isn’t it.
(pause)…
And what is it, a two act show? Or three acts? Oh, God please don’t let it be three acts. I don’t trust the sitter with the children for three acts. What do you expect when you pay more for parking than for child care?...

Unfortunately, this production is not without its detractors. Indeed, if you are one of the people who gave a standing ovation to the current stage version of The Full Monty with its absolutely atrocious singing, you’re probably not going to enjoy The Drowsy Chaperone. Indeed as the reviews indicate, Drowsy isn’t for everyone.

Toronto Sun readers were soberly warned by its theatre critic that it’s short on both affection and real humour… it's still just a skit, trying desperately to be something far more. Well excuse me; The Full Monte, which he praises, could hardly be for the be academically inclined given its plot which is so thin that it virtually disappears when viewed sideways!

For Richard Ouzounian, THEATRE CRITIC at the Toronto Star, this “musical comedy still seems like Fringe show and "Drowsy" isn't the word!” …This is probably a musical for people who hate musicals, and secretly think they're all silly and trivial. I don't, and so I was less than amused by most of the proceedings. There are people who will enjoy this, and I wish them well. I just don't agree with them. But most of all, let us hope this is where the expansion of The Drowsy Chaperone ends. I really don't want to see it further "improved" a year from now at the Hummingbird Centre, or - heaven forbid - Skydome.

Ouzounian obviously isn’t swept away by this production, which is his right. Perhaps it was the comments of the play’s narrator that appeared in Now Magazine that caught his eye way back on November 25, 1999:

One of the brilliant devices of the show is an unnamed character -- referred to in the program simply as the Man In The Chair - who narrates the musical. Played with sinister enthusiasm by Martin (Bob Martin is one of the three authors behind the book on which the script is based) himself, the tweedy narrator takes us down musical memory lane, spinning his original-cast Drowsy Chaperone LP and recreating the show's opening night, occasionally stopping to praise or mock certain scenes and also to provide lurid, Hollywood Babylon-style details about the performers' sad real lives.

I take a peek at the script, and see that he is called Creepy Man.

Martin and Van De Graaff start giggling.

"You know Richard Ouzounian?" asks Martin, referring to TVO's entertainment head and host of CBC Radio's Say It With Music.

“Well, we love him. But the Creepy Man is based on someone with his enthusiasm, someone who's maybe a little bit too much into the show, someone who bores people by talking about their original-cast albums. Basically it's what Richard Ouzounian would have become if he weren't successful.”

Gentle parodies.

Back at Eye Magazine, Drowsy gets Five Stars - Is Chaperone Broadway bound? See the full review here: http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_06.21.01/arts/onstage.html

Kate Taylor at the Globe & Mail seems to have liked it as well (a fact that makes me nervous since she and I rarely agree): With more songs, stronger leads and direction from Daniel Brooks, this much worked-over Fringe hit finally emerges as an amusing, minor satire of our affection for old musicals. Bob Martin is delightful as a nerdy radio host who is going to play us his 78-rpm of that beloved chestnut The Drowsy Chaperone. Much silliness follows with Karen Hines and Dan Chameroy producing a big-eyed gamine and long-bodied aristocrat worthy of many an old movie.

For an earlier take on Drowsy check out Mira Friedlander review from July 12, 1999 when it played at George Ignatieff Theater and the running time was only one hour: http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1312/8_375/55241736/p1/article.jhtml

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