‘Drowsy Chaperone’ funny ode to musicals

Goodspeed Musicals’ promisingly funny new production, “The Drowsy Chaperone,” has a snarky and opinionated guy at its core called Man in Chair. Right away I identify with it.

The show, a musical-loving musical, began in 1997 when writers Don McKellar, Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison put together a musical pastiche of old beloved shows as a gift to theater folks Bob Martin and Janet Van De Graaf, who were getting married.

The little musical (more risque than this version) was so well-received they decided to make it a real musical and added the Man in Chair as a “narrator/ guide who plays one of his favorite shows for the audience while it comes alive around him,” according to artistic assistant Anika Chapman in her program notes.

In development, they made it about the 1920s and included theatrical tropes of the time, such as “mistaken identities, bumbling gangsters, spittakes” and a producer named Feldzieg whose name is a reverse of Ziegfeld, writes Chapman. And Bob Martin actually played the quirky Man in Chair, who “fills the plot holes, with laugh-out-loud results,” says a Goodspeed release.

The show made it to Broadway in 2006, still with Martin in chair, and was nominated for 13 Tonys, winning five.

As director Hunter Foster puts it in his director’s vision statement, “I can’t think of a more fitting place to stage a show about ‘one’s love of musicals’

than at a venue which has such a rich history of bringing classic musicals to the stage.”

And neither can we. Goodspeed’s version features choreography by Chris Bailey and actors Jennifer Allen, Clyde Alves, Ruth Gottschall, Stephanie Rothenberg and John Scherer (as Man in Chair). It runs through Nov. 25. The PG-rated show also includes kids nights Oct. 3 to 5 and chances to meet the cast after performances on Oct. 18, Nov. 1 and Nov. 15.

Courtesy of Diane Sobolewski John Scherer, “Man in Chair,” with James Judy, Blakely Slaybaugh and Peter Slaybaugh.

Courtesy of Diane Sobolewski John Scherer as Man in Chair.