Yesterday I attended a matinee performance of “The Drowsy Chaperone” at the Music Mountain Theatre. It was incredible, dazzling, inventive, fun and featured a first rate cast with specific kudos going to Suzanne Lagreca in the title role, Jamie Geddes as a Broadway star who is torn between her career and marriage to an oil magnet, and David Whitman who is the narrator.
The premise of the show is the narrator – who is referred to as “the man in the chair” – is sharing his favorite musical, “The Drowsy Chaperone,” with the audience, providing detail after detail … after detail about the the writers and director, who originally performed in the play back in 1928, and the social and historical context with the play.
There were moments when I was thrilled. There were other moments when I raised an eyebrow, or shook my head. I sometimes thought, why is the narrator inserting himself into the action of the play? Why can’t he just be quiet and let us watch the show? He’s like the Stage Manager in “Our Town” on steroids. There are bits that seemed imposed (note that I write “seemed”) like the phone ringing to disrupt the action, the light going out and the Super showing up deal with the fuse box.
As my mind was whizzing back and forth like a tennis ball – do I like this as much as I think I do, or am I so distracted by the cheesiness that I can’t fully embrace the piece – it all came together.
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