The Drowsy Chaperone, book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar, music and lyrics by

Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison, was written in 1997 and debuted on a Broadway stage in 2006.
The show is a spoof of musical comedies dating from the 1920s. It’s narrated by Man in Chair,
who is an older, lonely man. He listens to the show on a record and pauses it multiple times to
monologue. The story follows quite a cast—for starters, Janet Van De Graaff, a star who has
decided to leave the stage in favor of marrying Robert Martin, an ordinary man. The chaperone
in question is the maid of honor, Janet’s friend and confidante, who also happens to be a drunk in
the time of prohibition. Other members of the main cast include Aldolpho, a man from Europe
notorious for seducing women, George, the best man who is also in charge of finding a minister
for the wedding, Mrs. Tottendale, the ditzy host of the wedding, Underling, Mrs. Tottendale’s
butler, Feldzig, Janet’s producer, Kitty, aspiring starlet, the gangsters, who threaten Feldzig to
keep Janet onstage, and Trix, an aviatrix who saves the wedding.

The show is an oxymoron in itself. It’s well written but it’s also badly written for that
very reason. It spoofs musical comedies well. However, it seems to lack a moral. There is no call
to action, no lesson, no reason for the story to have happened. There’s no takeaway – it’s simply
a wedding gone terribly wrong covered in overdramatic songs with a moral haphazardly slapped
on at the end. Even the supposed moral is useless. The ‘as we stumble along’ motif is used
earlier in the show to comfort Janet but, as she points out, it doesn’t apply to her at all. Much like
the uselessness to Janet, the moral is useless to the story. In short, the show is fun but at its heart
entirely soulless. The story also uses a deus ex machina to tie all the loose ends into little bows,
but I have less to complain about that aspect of the show. That was a clear parody.

The vapidity of the show has nothing to compare to the quality of the production.
Rehearsals were always purposeful and I never felt like coming to them was useless. The set was
beautiful and helped the show come alive. The costumes were so fun and performing with a pit
was ten orders of magnitude better than performing with tracks. The experience of the show was
very much worth it. I’m very, very glad I was a part of it, even just in the ensemble.