The Drowsy Chaperone’s journey from bachelor party skit to Broadway hit is the stuff happily ever after musicals are made of — and then some. It started in 1998 as an elaborate wedding gift for Toronto actors Bob Martin and Janet Van de Graaff from their musical theater-loving colleagues. Presented as a 40-minute send-up to the 1920s musicals they all loved, this original musical within a comedy was destined to have a life beyond stag party entertainment.

“Janet and I knew that we wanted to do something with this show,” explains the groom and Second City actor Bob Martin. “It came out of love from our friends to us and we wanted to share it.”

Inspired by musical lore of early Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin and Cole Porter, The Drowsy Chaperone parodies every conceivable gag, gimmick, convention and plot point of musical comedies of the Roaring 20s but with footloose affection.

 “I knew when we were watching it at my wedding party, that there was something about the exuberance of a 1920s musical that seemed like the type of thing that we should do and expand,” Martin explained. “We knew that we couldn’t just present a musical of another era, a fake musical. That wouldn’t be enough. We needed to add some kind of framework, iconic character, who presents the audience’s perspective on what we were watching, which would allow us to comment on it, to deconstruct it. Sort of a more post-modern approach."

That’s when Martin created the narrator, Man in Chair, and The Drowsy Chaperone became a one-man show with a musical in it. “We realized early on that Man in Chair was the lead character. We needed him to comment on the show to help the audience, to give it perspective.”

A retooled version opened the following year at the Toronto Fringe Festival and the journey to Broadway continued — a trip that would ultimately take eight years with numerous revisions, expanded stagings, the addition of enthusiastic producers and an infusion of cash, and the innovations of director-choreographer Casey Nicholaw and his creative team.

“The material was really entertaining,” Nicholaw explains. “But we all realized it was about fleshing out the show within a show a little bit more. We knew that Man in Chair’s material was strong, but we needed to work out the numbers and make the show dance more. Early on, a lot of the comments that I got from people were that they wanted to get to know more about the people in the show, and to care about them. We wanted the show to seem less like a sketch and more like a full-blown musical — to bring to Broadway.”

With Nicholaw involved, the creative process became all the more enjoyable. To cast the show, he imagined how it would have been done in the 20s, with the top vaudeville starts plopped down on stage and a flimsy book written around them. For the Broadway production and the national tour, Nicholaw found top rate musical theater performers to play 20s period musical theater performers vying for the spotlight in stereotypical roles of a 1928 musical that doesn’t really exist. Get it, got it, good.

“We all wanted to put in bits and pieces of the musicals that we love,” Nicholaw recalls, “the things that entertain us and make us laugh.”

Such as mix ups, mayhem and a gay (as in happy) wedding featuring a pampered starlet, her producer, the debonair groom, a Latin lover, a daffy dowager, her English butler, a pair of gangsters who double as pastry chefs, and a drunken a.k.a. drowsy Diva acting as the chaperone. Composer Jule Gable and lyricist Sidney Stein had a string of 12 unforgettable Broadway hits during their day including The Gay Geisha, Hamlet & Eggs and, of course, Drowsy, Or did they?

“People think The Drowsy Chaperone is an actual musical from the 20s and believe the song writing team of Gable & Stein not only exist, but are legends.” explains Casey Nicholaw, “Here’s the perfect example: We were casting in Los Angeles and a woman said to me, ‘I know Gable.’ And I said, ‘Oh, really.’ And, she said ‘Well actually, I know his nephew.’  With that, I knew we’d pulled it off and I also knew that I sure wasn’t going to cast her.”

Gable & Stein owe the witty, tuneful score for The Drowsy Chaperone’s to lyricist Lisa Lambert and composer Greg Morrison.

They have adeptly re-worked popular ‘20s song styles and dressed them in sophisticated lyrics to produce a rich, evocative score celebrating American musicals of the Jazz Age.

The Drowsy Chaperone is truly an original. It isn’t based on a movie, or built around a star, and it’s definitely not a revival. It is a show that constantly comments on itself. It makes fun of a bygone era but has a good time doing it, with the utmost respect and a whole lot of love.

As for the four theater fans that started it all, they are all still close friends and still collaborating on new projects. But what about Janet?

“Well, our marriage has survived,” Martin laughs. “And she really loves the show. In fact, Janet is in it every night and I don’t mean because of the character of Janet Van De Graff. We’ve actually made our wedding picture a permanent part of the set.”

Every night when the curtain comes down, they live happily ever after.

The Drowsy Chaperone has a book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar, who won the 2006 Tony for Best Book of a Musical, and a score by lyricist Lisa Lambert and composer Greg Morrison, who won the 2006 Tony for Best Original Score.

Slinging Slang

So who knew that drowsy means drunk in 20s slang? For the real deal on Twenties Talk, click here.

Show photos: Joan Marcus. Additional photos courtesy of The Drowsy Chaperone.

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