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The Drowsy Chaperon[e]
Oct. 26th, 2007 04:12 pmOn Tuesday night, my parents took me to the musical The Drowsy Chaperone, which was playing at the relatively new Marquis theater located inside the Marriot hotel on Broadway. The Marquis is amongst the better theaters that I've been inside of, Studio 64 being amongst the worst. It has more leg room than most, fairly comfortable seats, and excellent accoustics. Of course we were only five rows from the stage, with orchestra seats. I was with my folks - if I was seeing it with friends or by my lonesome, I'd be in nosebleed territory otherwise known as the far reaches of the upper Mezzaine. Having had seats up there, I can tell you the experience is quite different. In fact, it would be better to see the show on tv than see it in the Mezzaine. Why? Unless the theater has great accoustics or is small enough -you can't hear most of the words or lyrics. If the seats aren't sloped or staggered, you don't see much either. Live theater much like live concerts is better the closer you are to the stage. When you sit at the back, you are basically watching and listening to the audience as much as if not more than the performance. I've done this, each time, I am disappointed and a bit annoyed that I've spent 35 to 55 bucks, with my knees cramped up to my chin, peering over heads, and craning my neck to see and hear a bunch of people far below me on the stage. In today's world - seeing a play or musical from a decent vantage point is reserved for students with discounts and/or contacts or the absurdly wealthy. You think I'm joking? Here's the prices of orchestra seats in most of the theaters around town: 110-150 dollars. It cost a friend of mine, $900 to take four people to see the new Tom Stoppard play. Wicked? 175 dollars a ticket. Jersey Boys? 120. And don't talk to me about Spring Awakening - you can't even get seats according to the people chatting behind us.
At any rate this is a rather lengthy explanation as to why I only see theater, good theater, when my parents decide to visit me in NYC, splurge on it and take me along for the ride. My parents are theater buffs - they see about five to ten shows a year in Hilton Head, many as good if not better than what you might see on Broadway not to mention a heck of a lot cheaper - I think orchestra seats cost maybe thirty to fifty bucks there. Growing up? We saw at least two or three plays or musicals a year, went to the ballet, and if they'd been into opera and had the money - gone to that too. But, alas, they did not get into opera until they hit their dotage and actually had the money to afford it - so my brother and I managed to skip out on that cultural experience. I've only seen one opera live - Carmen. And I've seen two versions of it, one at the National Opera Company in Convent Gardens London (which I've forgotten the name of because it was way back in 1987) and one at a local high school in Lawrence, Kansas, neither was very good. The best might have been the high school version - which is saying something. (It wasn't just me, opera fanatics hated the London version.) My brother hates plays and musicals - he prefers rock concerts or live musical performances. So he didn't come.
The Drowsy Chaperone was not at all what I expected. I suggested it to my parents, because the music and style of the play fit what interested them. Jazz and big band tunes with a curmudgenly host giving bits and pieces of commentary. I did not expect to enjoy it as much as I did. I expected it to be sweet, a little funny, and to forget it soon afterward. Much like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Hairspray.
It is unlike any play or musical I have ever seen. And as result hard to describe. The story is about a man who is sitting alone in his NYC studio apartment, complete with drop down bed and old style refrigerator. It is November and he's feeling sort of blue. So he puts on a favorite show tune album, one that he has listened to numerous times, but never ever seen performed. He'd gotten it from his mother - it had been her favorite. It's different, he tells the audience that he imagines sits just beyond him, than the musicals on today. It's sunnier, shorter, less politically correct, and in some ways more comforting even with its considerable flaws - all of which he points out during the show apologetically and at times snarkily. The record has been played so many times that it skips in places and he has to stop it. Or he will have it interrupted by a phone ringing, and scream at the phone to stop, just so he can escape a bit longer into his fantasy. There's even a place on the recording - that has been garbled and he has become obsessed with to the point of distraction. He's replayed this portion millions of times. It concerns one line of dialogue, a piece of advice, that the Drowsey Chaperone gives her young charge, Janet, regarding marriage. Does she say "Leave while you can? Or is it Live while you can?" He's not certain.
The musical is not so much a musical as a musical within a one-man play. Oh the muscial has numerous actors, sets, songs, and dance numbers - but both the audience and the characters in it are clearly inside the narrator's head.
Watching it moved me to laughter and tears, because I identified with it. As I think anyone would who has ever been obsessed or devoted to a book, a record, a tv show or a movie or a play to the point that they spend time endlessly looking at it, turning it over, analyzing, criticizing, writing fanfic on it, and discussing with others.
It's a story about the escape into that fantasy world. The cost of escaping into it. And to a degree the benefits. How escaping to that world acts as a weird sort of drug. But that's not all it is about - at the same time, it operates as a deft satire of the present state of musical theater and live performance. There are throw-away lines about how the comical impersonations of foreign personnages have been banned from adult theater and relegated to children's theater and cartoons run by Disney, or the pyro-tech of shows such as Miss Saigon aren't really much more advanced than the Busby Berkley numbers of yester-year. How a cell phone or even an intermission will destroy the moment - the moment when you are transported inside another world outside of this one, one that is comfortable and happy and makes you smile. The silliness of certain scenes. How a lovely tune can be almost destroyed by inane and almost laughable lyrics.
If there's a theme - it is symbolized by a rousing tune sung by the Drowsy Chaperone, the dipsy half-drunk chaperon to the heroine in the musical the man in the chair has described for us. "Stumbling Along Life's Highway" it is called or something to that effect. About how all we can do is stumble along and hope somehow, someway we will come out okay. An anthem that cheers the man in the chair, who is weighted down by his lonliness, yet at the same time too comfortable within it to take action and seek out others. The best he can do is talk to the audience in his head that never answers back.
I saw the musical on Tuesday and it haunts me still. It feels post-modernist in structure, with multiple layers. The satirical comedy at the top, with somewhat bittersweet metaphysical one just underneath. Who is real, one wonders at the end of it. The audience, the man in the chair, or the musical. Each world sits outside the next. At the end, only at the very end, do the three merge, the actors in the musical notice the man in the chair and his world and invite him inside theirs to escape it. Then they all bow to the audience. You'd think that was the end, but it's not. Not quite. The last bit before the curtain falls is the man sitting back in his chair, reading a book, escaping into yet another world.
The Drowsy Chaperonee walked away with mulitple Tony's and Outer Circle Critics Awards when it premiered in 2006, shocking the theater elite. It took Tony's for best music and lyrics, score, set design, as well as many other categories including one for the actress portraying The Drowsey Chaperone.
If you ever get the chance to see this gem, I highly recommend it. Even if you don't like musicals very much. It is that perfect satire, one that loves the item that it pokes fun at while commenting on it at the same time, telling us a little bit more about ourselves in the process.
At any rate this is a rather lengthy explanation as to why I only see theater, good theater, when my parents decide to visit me in NYC, splurge on it and take me along for the ride. My parents are theater buffs - they see about five to ten shows a year in Hilton Head, many as good if not better than what you might see on Broadway not to mention a heck of a lot cheaper - I think orchestra seats cost maybe thirty to fifty bucks there. Growing up? We saw at least two or three plays or musicals a year, went to the ballet, and if they'd been into opera and had the money - gone to that too. But, alas, they did not get into opera until they hit their dotage and actually had the money to afford it - so my brother and I managed to skip out on that cultural experience. I've only seen one opera live - Carmen. And I've seen two versions of it, one at the National Opera Company in Convent Gardens London (which I've forgotten the name of because it was way back in 1987) and one at a local high school in Lawrence, Kansas, neither was very good. The best might have been the high school version - which is saying something. (It wasn't just me, opera fanatics hated the London version.) My brother hates plays and musicals - he prefers rock concerts or live musical performances. So he didn't come.
The Drowsy Chaperone was not at all what I expected. I suggested it to my parents, because the music and style of the play fit what interested them. Jazz and big band tunes with a curmudgenly host giving bits and pieces of commentary. I did not expect to enjoy it as much as I did. I expected it to be sweet, a little funny, and to forget it soon afterward. Much like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Hairspray.
It is unlike any play or musical I have ever seen. And as result hard to describe. The story is about a man who is sitting alone in his NYC studio apartment, complete with drop down bed and old style refrigerator. It is November and he's feeling sort of blue. So he puts on a favorite show tune album, one that he has listened to numerous times, but never ever seen performed. He'd gotten it from his mother - it had been her favorite. It's different, he tells the audience that he imagines sits just beyond him, than the musicals on today. It's sunnier, shorter, less politically correct, and in some ways more comforting even with its considerable flaws - all of which he points out during the show apologetically and at times snarkily. The record has been played so many times that it skips in places and he has to stop it. Or he will have it interrupted by a phone ringing, and scream at the phone to stop, just so he can escape a bit longer into his fantasy. There's even a place on the recording - that has been garbled and he has become obsessed with to the point of distraction. He's replayed this portion millions of times. It concerns one line of dialogue, a piece of advice, that the Drowsey Chaperone gives her young charge, Janet, regarding marriage. Does she say "Leave while you can? Or is it Live while you can?" He's not certain.
The musical is not so much a musical as a musical within a one-man play. Oh the muscial has numerous actors, sets, songs, and dance numbers - but both the audience and the characters in it are clearly inside the narrator's head.
Watching it moved me to laughter and tears, because I identified with it. As I think anyone would who has ever been obsessed or devoted to a book, a record, a tv show or a movie or a play to the point that they spend time endlessly looking at it, turning it over, analyzing, criticizing, writing fanfic on it, and discussing with others.
It's a story about the escape into that fantasy world. The cost of escaping into it. And to a degree the benefits. How escaping to that world acts as a weird sort of drug. But that's not all it is about - at the same time, it operates as a deft satire of the present state of musical theater and live performance. There are throw-away lines about how the comical impersonations of foreign personnages have been banned from adult theater and relegated to children's theater and cartoons run by Disney, or the pyro-tech of shows such as Miss Saigon aren't really much more advanced than the Busby Berkley numbers of yester-year. How a cell phone or even an intermission will destroy the moment - the moment when you are transported inside another world outside of this one, one that is comfortable and happy and makes you smile. The silliness of certain scenes. How a lovely tune can be almost destroyed by inane and almost laughable lyrics.
If there's a theme - it is symbolized by a rousing tune sung by the Drowsy Chaperone, the dipsy half-drunk chaperon to the heroine in the musical the man in the chair has described for us. "Stumbling Along Life's Highway" it is called or something to that effect. About how all we can do is stumble along and hope somehow, someway we will come out okay. An anthem that cheers the man in the chair, who is weighted down by his lonliness, yet at the same time too comfortable within it to take action and seek out others. The best he can do is talk to the audience in his head that never answers back.
I saw the musical on Tuesday and it haunts me still. It feels post-modernist in structure, with multiple layers. The satirical comedy at the top, with somewhat bittersweet metaphysical one just underneath. Who is real, one wonders at the end of it. The audience, the man in the chair, or the musical. Each world sits outside the next. At the end, only at the very end, do the three merge, the actors in the musical notice the man in the chair and his world and invite him inside theirs to escape it. Then they all bow to the audience. You'd think that was the end, but it's not. Not quite. The last bit before the curtain falls is the man sitting back in his chair, reading a book, escaping into yet another world.
The Drowsy Chaperonee walked away with mulitple Tony's and Outer Circle Critics Awards when it premiered in 2006, shocking the theater elite. It took Tony's for best music and lyrics, score, set design, as well as many other categories including one for the actress portraying The Drowsey Chaperone.
If you ever get the chance to see this gem, I highly recommend it. Even if you don't like musicals very much. It is that perfect satire, one that loves the item that it pokes fun at while commenting on it at the same time, telling us a little bit more about ourselves in the process.
