THE DROWSY CHAPERONE is not your typical Broadway show. Sure, it has the large musical numbers, dazzling costumes and glitzy sets. But from the opening moments in complete darkness with a man’s voice dryly saying "I hate theater," offering up the prayer he always mutters before a show - that it be “short and free of actors who roam the audience,” you know this will be a special experience. The voice belongs to the central character simply regarded as Man in Chair, a lonely musical theatre enthusiast, whose cherished possession is a rare cast recording of the faux 1928 musical THE DROWSY CHAPERONE. As he plays the album and begins to narrate the story of the show, it literally comes to life in his drab little apartment, complete with its motley cast of gangsters, a butler, a playboy, an actress, an aviatrix and a Latin lover. Bob Martin, who wrote the book and originated the Broadway role of Man in Chair recently paused from new fatherhood to discuss the National Tour of THE DROWSY CHAPERONE which begins this month in Toronto.
You recently became a father for the first time. How’s that going?
It’s great and it’s completely exhausting. He’s tiny and healthy and everything’s great. It’s very exciting the whole experience. (My advice for expecting parents is) Go out a lot before you have the baby because you won’t be able to afterward.
The original story for THE DROWSY CHAPERONE was given to you as a gift at your bachelor party. How did it make it to Broadway from there?
It was performed as a sort of half-hour, 40 minute fake 1920’s musical by a group of our friends who were all writers and performers in Toronto. It was spearheaded by the lyricist Lisa Lambert who’s my oldest friend and was Best Man at my wedding. It was her responsibility to put together the entertainment for the party. It wasn’t completely out of the blue because we had in the past sort of, as a group, created fake musicals of another era and we’re all performers and we would do them as public performances. DROWSY was just sort of the best of the crop. We loved it so much and there was so much love in the show and it was fully costumed and everything. We took that 40 minute presentation and we expanded it and added the character of Man in Chair because we wanted to provide some kind of modern perspective on material from that era. From there we did it at the Fringe Festival of Toronto which is a small theatre festival we’d been in many times before and it did really well there. That was in an hour form and then we expanded it further and did it at a 500-seat theatre at the Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto as part of a subscription series. Then it went to a New York festival and to Los Angeles at the Ahmanson (Theatre) and then Broadway and then London. It’s been an absolutely amazing journey starting from this little gift.
Did you plan on playing the Man in Chair part from the beginning?
I guess it was sort of a natural fit because I was writing the material. I’m a writer and performer but at that time I was doing more writing than I was performing. I just jumped into the character immediately when we started discussions about it and it was just sort of a natural thing for me to play. I did not think that I would be playing it over and over again eventually on Broadway. So that was never really the intention but I just sort of went with it as the show grew.
How would you describe the unique concept of THE DROWSY CHAPERONE to people who are unfamiliar with it?
I always say that it’s about a man whose only happiness is escaping into this romantic world from a bygone era. He does so by playing an album of his favorite forgotten musical and that musical comes to life in his apartment. That’s how I describe it. People say that it’s a very difficult show to describe and I guess it is but to me it’s really simple. It takes place in a man’s apartment and a musical comes out of the refrigerator. We’ve had a lot of problems with the title because people have no associations with that title. But I kind of think that’s good. We created the title THE DROWSY CHAPERONE because we wanted to suggest a forgotten musical, it sounds like a title you would forget. It’s a forgettable title. That’s kind of worked against us marketing-wise.
The first few moments of THE DROWSY CHAPERONE, in complete darkness, are quite funny and set the tone appropriately. Was that segment in place from the very beginning or did it evolve during the creative process?
It was there right from the fringe version. That really came as a result of us understanding when you go to the theatre it’s a stressful experience because you know what it can do, you know how great it can be, but it often isn’t. Actually I had been doing a show and I heard through the curtain before the show began, these people talking in the seats and they were arguing. They were saying “Why do we do this every year, we come to this theatre?” They didn’t know what they were going to see because it was part of their subscription series, they didn’t really know about the show. It was so funny to hear. So we tried to sort of capture that.
What are your plans beyond the Toronto engagement?
I am going to do the Toronto run, it’s a month. I’m working on writing another show. Depending on how that goes I may be doing some tour dates on this tour but I really am trying to get another show up and running in New York as quickly as possibly. It’s kind of, right now, to be perfectly honest, it’s about the baby. Which is so nice to have the Toronto run - I don’t have to leave town. I actually have to leave town to rehearse, we’re rehearsing in New York. But we’re actually running in Toronto so I can come home every day which is great. You don’t want to miss those early weeks.
By: Beth Cox
