The show began previews at The Marquis Theatre April 3 toward a May 1 opening. The cast album will be recorded April 16.
The disc's producers will be Grammy Award winner and Academy Award nominee Joel Moss and Sh-K-Boom/Ghostlight Records president Kurt Deutsch.
The Drowsy Chaperone has words and music by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison and book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar. Casey Nicholaw (Spamalot) directs and choreographs.
The musical features Danny Burstein, Georgia Engel, Tony Award winner Sutton Foster, Edward Hibbert, Troy Britton Johnson, Eddie Korbich, Garth Kravits, Jason Kravits, Beth Leavel, Kecia Lewis-Evans, Bob Martin, Jennifer Smith, Lenny Wolpe, Andrea Chamberlain, Jay Douglas, Stacia Fernandez, Linda Griffin, Angela Pupello, Kilty Reidy, Joey Sorge and Patrick Wetzel.
Orchestrations are by Larry Blank, dance and incidental music arrangements by Glen Kelly, music direction/vocal arrangements by Phil Reno and musical coordination by John Miller. The Drowsy Chaperone is produced by Kevin McCollum, Roy Miller, Boyett Ostar, Stephanie McClelland, Barbara Freitag and Jill Furman.
According to the producers, "To chase his blues away, a modern day musical theatre addict known simply as Man in Chair (Martin) drops the needle on his favorite LP — the 1928 musical comedy The Drowsy Chaperone. From the crackle of his hi-fi, the uproariously funny musical magically bursts to life on stage, telling the tale of a pampered Broadway starlet (Foster) who wants to give up show business to get married, her producer (Wolpe) who sets out to sabotage the nuptials, her chaperone (Leavel), the debonair groom (Johnson), the dizzy chorine (Smith), the Latin lover (Burstein) and a pair of gangsters who double as pastry chefs (Garth and Jason Kravits). Man in Chair’s infectious love of The Drowsy Chaperone speaks to anyone who has ever been transported by the theatre."
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Ghostlight Records, created by Sh-K-Boom co-founders Kurt Deutsch and Sherie René Scott, "ensures that music of the theatre by composers old and new will always be enjoyed. Ghostlight Records honors the past while shining a light toward the future." The company was honored with three 2006 Grammy Award nominations for Best Musical Show Album: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Hair (The Actors' Fund of America Benefit Recording) and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Other recent recordings include the original cast recording of See What I Wanna See by John Michael LaChiusa and Patti LuPone's The Lady With The Torch. Ghostlight Records is distributed by Razor & Tie Entertainment. For more information, visit www.GhostlightRecords.com or www.sh-k-boom.com.
For more information, visit www.drowsychaperone.com.
