The brightest, funniest and most fun musical of the Broadway season has
produced the brightest, funniest and most fun original Broadway cast record
of the year. This confection captures the tone of the show in both its
packaging and the recording itself. Just as the show is built on one
singularly comic concept, so the recording stakes out its concept and sticks
with it ... it is the essence of the experience of having a theater fan play
his favorite original cast recording for you, a 1928 doozy. Never mind that there wouldn't be an original
cast recording of a 1928 show (there were instances of recordings of
individual songs by members of original casts, but generally speaking, the
practice of recording the entire score of a Broadway musical the way it was
presented in the theater began with Oklahoma! over a decade later).
Never mind that Larry Blank's fabulous (and Tony-nominated) orchestrations
use a larger pit band than would likely have been used in '28. This isn't a
history lesson about musical comedy -- it is a musical comedy. And
both musical and funny it is! The score is a light and lively pastiche of
1920s Broadway songs, the script a lampoon of the light musical comedy style
of the day, and the performances parodies of the standard star-types of
the decade. |
Storyline: A musical theater fan, sitting in his rather shabby apartment,
plays his favorite original cast recording for his guests -- the audience. It
is a recording of the (fictitious) 1928 musical comedy "The Drowsy
Chaperone," which springs to life in his living room as he explains all of
its plot and the tiny details only a true musical theater maven would know
or care about. "Don't worry" he says "All the characters are two dimensional
and the plot is well worn."
Most of all, the magic is
worked through the presence of Bob Martin as the musical theater fan who
hosts the entire thing. Billed simply as "Man in Chair" his affection for
the material is infectious and his humorous asides both well delivered
and sharp as he provides the bridge between what are essentially vaudeville shtick
routines strung together brilliantly. Some of that narration is integral to
the song delivery and can be heard as part of a song, but much of it is
placed on separate tracks so you can program your CD player to hear just the
music. Skip tracks 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 13 which will bring the playing time
down to 50 minutes including the two "bonus tracks." Don't do this the first
time you play the disc, however, as you will miss the neat incidental music
backing on Martin's shtick.
The performances of the rest of the
cast are all highly stylized on stage and
that stylization comes through on the recording. There's the slyly
stiff rendition of a star turn from Sutton Foster, who almost seems to be
doing an impersonation of herself in her own Tony-winning role of
Thoroughly Modern Millie. (Just listen to build her big number, "Show Off,"
in the way a 20s star would sell her big moment.) There's Beth Leavel'
smashing drunk act, Danny Burstein's oily send-up of the conceited lothario, Georgia Engel
sounding so, well, Georgia Engel-ish, teamed nicely with Edward Hibbert in a
role simply called "Underling."
Even the packaging continues the
gag. The cd's label looks like an old LP record and the insert in the jewel
case is a doctored photo of the Morosco Theatre with The Drowsy Chaperone
on the Marquee. (The Morsco was demolished to make way for the building
containing the Marquis Theatre where the show is playing.) Two pages of the
booklet are devoted to "quotes" from reviews of the 1928 The Drowsy
Chaperone ("The greatest musical of this or any other week!") But, just
in case you might be tempted to sue for false advertising, the requisite
disclaimer is included in small print --- "The reviews and articles cited
herein are fictional, and may cause drowsiness, nausea, dry mouth, night
sweats and the old ennui. Do not drive or operate heavy machinery while
reading the reviews and articles cited herein." It's that kind of humor that
makes the entire thing so much fun.
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