The title show-within-the-show is a never-was musical about a playboy, his actress fiancée and her jaded chaperone. The musical plays in the same house where Foster played (and won a Tony for) Thoroughly Modern Millie. The writers are part of the theatre and comedy community in Toronto, where Drowsy began as a lark (as a lengthy musical skit at a 1998 stag party celebrating Martin's marriage) and was developed in three separate stagings there before being snatched up by American producer Roy Miller.įollowing a well-received test run at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles in late 2005, when Casey Nicholaw directed and choreographed and Tony Award-winner Sutton Foster starred in a major role, The Drowsy Chaperone now makes its Broadway bow, leading toward a May 1 opening. Our narrator is named, simply, Man in Chair, and he's played by Canadian actor Bob Martin, who co-wrote the Drowsy libretto with Don McKellar, in league with songwriters Greg Morrison and Lisa Lambert. When he plays the LP on his stereo, sections of the fictive 1928 show come to life in his lonely apartment - and he can't help sharing juicy tidbits about the (mostly dead, one imagines) showfolk who created the show 80 years ago. The 90-minute intermissionless experience concerns a musical comedy maven who delights in sharing tracks from the cast album of his favorite vintage Broadway show, Gable & Stein's The Drowsy Chaperone. The producers of the musical comedy at the Marquis Theatre are hoping musical theatre addicts who love surprise - and who love backstage stories - will take a chance on a newcomer.Īnd why not? The experience is all about backstage gossip, breezy show tunes and finding refuge from a bad old world in a good old musical. Sutton Foster during a rehearsal of The Drowsy Chaperone.

Drowsy chaperone broadway playbill