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PLAYBILL ON OPENING NIGHT: The Drowsy Chaperone: Hot and Cold Running Feats
By Harry Haun
02 May 2006
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Sutton Foster; Casey Nicholaw; Bob Martin; Troy Britton Johnson; Beth Leavel; Edward Hibbert; John Lloyd Young; Joanna Gleason & Chris Sarandon; Rebecca Luker; Hunter Foster; Liza Minnelli; Nellie McKay & Michael Cerveris; Jane Krakowski; Eartha Kitt.
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben | Even the most seasoned end-of-season Broadway first-nighter is apt to get the bends going from Hot Feet to “Cold Feets,” as we just did this week. The former is the Earth, Wind & Fire songbook musical which opened April 30; the latter is a tap number that a jittery bridegroom does on the eve of his wedding to shake the nerves away in The Drowsy Chaperone, an original musical — that rarest of Broadway birds — which opened May 1.
Back to back, two different worlds that are separated by three city blocks.
The nominal, if not titular, star of The Drowsy Chaperone is Thoroughly Modern and Tony-winning Millie, Sutton Foster, back in flapper attire (and the Marriott Marquis) as a '20s musical star with the catchy moniker of Janet Van De Graaff, trying to marry her way out of the business. Her intended, he with the aforementioned “Cold Feets,” wears the unprepossessing name of Robert Martin and is played by Troy Britton Johnson.
The Drowsy Chaperone opened in November 1928 at the Morosco Theatre, a lovely rococo edifice long since razed and replaced by a big hotel complex (the unmentioned Marriott). We are told this, entre nous, by the tightly wound, fuss-budget show-buff on stage, identified in the Playbill as Man in Chair and played by the even more unprepossessingly named Bob Martin.
He has invited us in—since, after all, we’re at the very site of the show’s premiere—to share with us his private passion for this long (some might say rightly) forgotten musical, a pet of his he parades to those who venture into his otherwise cheerless cold-water flat.
As he puts needle to vinyl, Foster and Co. delightfully materialize and go into their show.
What we have here, in this “revival” of a show that never was, is a love offering. Man in Chair is offering it with love, and it is received with love by anyone with a weakness for musical theatre. In point of fact, this whole show came into being as a love offering.
When Robert met Janet and popped the question, his friends from high school presented the couple (knowing their fondness for old musicals) with an original old musical as their wedding present. Don McKellar did the book, and the songs were by Greg Morrison and designated best man, Lisa Lambert. “I learned the best man’s responsibility was to organize the bachelor party—the money that you raise at that goes to the wedding—so I
thought, ‘Let’s put a show on. We’ll raise money that way,’” relayed Lambert, clearly a fan-in-good-standing of Mickey-&-Judy movies, at the after-party at Tavern on the Green. “The Drowsy Chaperone was a 40-minute
musical at that point. It was actually a show we’d been thinking of doing for a while—a 1920s kind of show—so it wasn’t completely out of the blue, but we had never really found the right venue or time to do it, and this seemed the time. ‘It takes place at a wedding. We’ll name it after Bob and Janet. They’re characters.’ As Bob often says, ‘Often we need events in other people’s life.’ At least for me, that has been the case.”
The show grew like Topsy, through several productions in Toronto (with Janet Van De Graaff playing Janet Van De Graaff) and an American premiere at L.A.’s Ahmanson (courtesy of its new artistic director, Michael Ritchie). “I’m so happy with the audiences’ reaction to the show,” says Martin, who surrendered his real life role to concoct the Man in Chair persona that gives the show its heartbeat. “It’s very interesting to feel the New York audiences compared to the L.A. audiences. The L.A. audiences appreciated the show and we did well there—but New York is so much more vocal, more participatory.”
The last creative brick to come into place was Casey Nicholaw, who showed up the morning after his Broadway debut (as Spamalot choreographer) to apply for a hyphen and be Chaperone’s choreographer and director. (No grass growing on this one!) “Looking at the script,” he says, “the show needs to move like that. It needs to go from one thing seamlessly into the next. It was really great I was able to do both and just keep the whole thing flowing and moving like it was a dance number, y’know — and just keep that comedy I do in the scenes the same as the comedy I do in the dance and just keep it all feeling like one piece."
“What’s fun about it is that so many people do feel like it’s them or everybody knows someone like that. ‘You know me? I was a kid growing up with album after album and movie posters on the wall.’ It’s about someone who loves something that much. And also this musical, to this guy, is a guilty pleasure because it’s not necessarily the best musical in the world, but he loves it for so many sentimental reasons—and it’s a way to escape.”
As the chief figment of Man in Chair’s feverish imagination, Foster has the star
credentials, but she doesn’t flash them around. “The reason I did this show,” she says, “is that I wanted to be in the ensemble. I really wanted to be a part of a real group. That was my primary goal. I still have my moment, and then I can go backstage and pee.”
Foster’s “moment” has showstopper stamped all over it. “It’s basically a song called ‘Show Off,’ but it’s all about this woman who doesn’t want to `show off,' quote-unquote, and then proceeds to show off.” (We’re talking cartwheels, splits, spinning plates, playing glasses, jug-blowing, charming snakes, escaping from a straitjacket, shooting a bird out of the sky, diving through hoops—methinks she protests too much, right?) “It’s an incredible number, and it’s a real ensemble number. Most of the cast is on stage with me, and they’re all incorporated. Everybody’s participating. It’s like a well-oiled machine.”
Johnson, like Foster, has a real-life reference for his role—which he, too, completely ignores. “I only took Bob’s name,” he admits. “The great conceit of the show, of course, is that we play famous actors from the '20s playing parts in musicals, so I’m actually an actor playing an actor playing a part in a show. We watched a lot of those '20s musicals where the acting style was a little bit heightened and things were very broad and in direct contrast to the way actors are taught to act today; where everything was presentational. It
was hard because you feel like you’re doing things you’re not supposed to be doing.”
At one point in the show, Johnson puts his “Cold Feets” on roller skates, blindfolds
himself and sings, not inappropriately, “[I’m an] Accident Waiting to Happen.” Yes, he confirms, “It is tricky. It’s tricky to sing and be blindfolded and dance on roller skates all at the same time. I’ve fallen a couple of times. And then, of course, there’s the story of when we were in Los Angeles when we were rehearsing the number and Sutton actually fell, broke her wrist and performed most of the Los Angeles run with a cast on her arm.”
Beth Leavel won one of the show’s five L.A. awards in the title role of Sutton’s lady-in-waiting and p.a., a drowsy chaperone who nips more than she naps. True, Leavel
is gleefully pleased to report, every word of it. “Absolutely. Just on occasion. Every day. I
don’t think I’m ever without a glass in my hand, as a matter of fact. There are many,
many, many things I like about my character. One thing is her view of life is a little
heightened because Mama likes to have a martini with her at all times. She’s not drunk. She just has a happy, heightened sense of reality, and she kinda lives up there. She enables me to be extremely funny. My roots, my comfort, my soul—is in comedy. If I can have some comedy that has some pathos and some humanity at the root center, I’m the happiest girl on the planet.”
She credits Nicholaw’s velvet glove with shaping her performance. “Casey gave me
permission to explore everything, then he would help pick and choose and edit and go, ‘Why don’t we cut that? Go smaller with that.’ It was such teamwork in exploring.”
A large, large helping of incurably uncured ham is served up by Danny Burstein, playing an actor with an impenetrable and indefinable accent. “Oh, man, it’s an absolute blast. The only time I’ve ever gotten to be this big and this broad before is when I did an episode of ‘Absolutely Fabulous’ with the girls from BBC. They just encouraged you to
be big and fine and have a great time, and Casey Nicholaw has done the exact same thing. Such a smart, creative, funny person—and the writers are the exact same way. He has taken their energy and just helped it to blossom. Tonight was like fulfilling a wonderful dream I’ve had ever since I was a kid. It was really that kind of an opening night for me.”
The butler Underling is played by Edward Hibbert, who is anything but, dispensing his usual high-hatted haughtiness regardless of his station in life, which, in this case, happens to be
manservant of the manor where the wedding is to take place. His scene partner is
Georgia Engel, the daft biddy who owns the joint. Her tentative squeak of a voice hasn’t
deepened with the years. “I’m Eric Blore to her Billie Burke,” summarizes Hibbert.
“That’s really nice of him to say that,” simpers Engel. “Edward is great fun. We have a
duet near the end of the show called ‘Love Is Always Lovely in the End.’ It replaces a
song we did in Los Angeles called ‘I Remember Love.’ It was a very beautiful,
funny, little delicate song, but it didn’t have enough punch. But it’ll be on the album.”
Sh-K-Boom/Ghostlight Records expects to have the original cast recording in stores on June 13—sooner than that if you’re a Tony voter, according to company president Kurt Deutsch. Another bonus cut: a complete version of “Message From a Nightingale,” which gets Act II off to a bizarre false start (a la Spamalot’s “Finland” number).
Press and celebs converged at a new spot at the Marriott—the breezeway connecting 45th
and 46th Street (or, if you’re mythically inclined, approximately where with the first
first-nighters arrived for the "original" The Drowsy Chaperone). It was a felicitous arrangement, far
better than the celebrity clusters that previously coagulated in front of the second-floor
theatre. Plus, there was the added photo advantage of a long receiving line for cameramen
and scribes, as well as an unbroken string of stars ascending the escalator at the Marquis.
Liza Minnelli luxuriated on the receiving line, as befitted the top-billed arrivee of the
evening. Lyricist Lambert was all a-dither about meeting her, and Minnelli pretty much
went the distance of the party, sticking around until stars reached Tavern’s press alcove
so she could congratulate them. Immediately, she went into a long, intense huddle with
Foster, while Martin patiently (probably in vain) tried to get her attention on the sidelines.
In the No. 2 slot, Eartha Kitt put out her ever-persuasive Sparkle Plenty, as did the
back-from-London-and-rarin’-to-go Jane Krakowsi—both graduates of the last Nine.
Acting couples seemed to be in abundance: Brian Stokes Mitchell and Allyson Tucker
(he’s between albums right now—his critically cheered concert version of South Pacific is
in stores, selling well after its PBS airing, and his solo album, cleverly tagged “Brian
Stokes Mitchell,” arrives June 6. Then comes One Last Thing, his Cynthia Nixon flick in
which he plays a doctor); Stephen Bogardus and Dana Moore (he’s Philly bound to be
one of Terrence McNally’s Some Men); Maxwell Caulfield with wife Juliet Mills and
Tryst co-star Amelia Campbell; Based on a Totally True Story’s Michael Tucker and
Jill Eikenberry; The Light in the Piazza’s Chris Sarandon and Dirty Rotten
Scoundrel’s Joanna Gleason; Mrs. Danny Burstein (or Rebecca Luker, as she will be
billed May 9-30 at Feinstein’s at the Regency and Aug. 9-Sept. 2 at Primary Stages for a
very unmusical A. R.Gurney Jr. play titled Indian Blood) with her former—and the
current—Phantom of the Opera, Howard McGillin; The Producers’ Hunter Foster
(Sutton’s bro) and The Pajama Game’s Jennifer Cody; and the “American Idol” couple,
Constantine Moroulis and Kellie Pickler: Since she had more to tell the press, he stood
off to the side and waited. “I’m working on my album now and looking for other acting
opportunities,” she says. “And seeing a lot of Broadway lately. This is my home. I grew up
in the theatre so I’m just trying to catch up because I have been away for so long.” Continued...
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