FROM THE AISLE: THE DROWSY CHAPERONE

One of the great benefits of being a theater critic is that you get to take somebody with you to every play: a friend, relative, girlfriend, etc. But when I went to see The Drowsy Chaperone, playing now through June 5th at the BCA, for whatever reason I couldn’t find anyone to go with me. I was disappointed, as The Drowsy Chaperone‘s a musical comedy – something infinitely better when experienced with someone else.

But Bob Martin and Don McKellar’s comedy had a delightful surprise in store for lonely ole me. It opens in the home an unnamed man (a vitally strong Will McGarrahan), who talks to the audience about his love of old-fashioned Broadway musicals. He asks, “Do you remember The Drowsy Chaperone?”

We, of course, do not.

So he puts the soundtrack on and his apartment splits apart and we’re plunked down into the fictional musical he loves so much.

The Man in the Chair (as he’s called) becomes a narrator, taking us through the many conventions and stories of The Drowsy Chaperone.

By doing this, the playwrights get to poke fun of the clichés and simplicities of 1920s Broadway while at the same time indulging in them.

The story is classic: Janet Van De Graff (McCaela Donovan), a famous starlet, is giving up the spotlight to marry Robert Martin (David Christensen). A gangster, Mr. Feldzeig (J.T. Turner), whose boss has been funding Ms. Van De Graff’s popular shows, is trying to stop the nuptials. So, he sets an Italian lothario, Aldopho (a hilarious and unrecognizable Thomas Derrah) to woo the bride-to-be. Hijinks ensue.

The actors have a lot of fun with the types they’re playing and the music is charming and funny, the kind of slyly satirical nudge only real fans of the genre could write. One can see why it won 5 Tony Awards. There are clever bits when the Man in the Chair interrupts the action to comment on the lives of the actors in the show, describing what happened to them later in life. Or one wonderful moment when his record skips and a stage full of singing actors suddenly start skipping, too.

For it is the Man in the Chair that really makes The Drowsy Chaperone work.

He sits alone in his little chair, so tickled by the proceedings, by the crass sentimentality and the supreme unreality of the plot. Occasionally, the phone rings in his apartment and he laments the real world intruding on his flight of escapism.

This is the point, isn’t it? These musicals, he says, take us away from the harshness of life, from the cold truth of loneliness and misery. After the show ended, I couldn’t help but think – sitting there in the theater, the seat next to me empty, unfilled by someone from my life – that he was right.

While watching, I had forgotten that I was alone. And, that, reader, is sometimes all great art needs to do for us.

[The Drowsy Chaperone. Now through 6.5.11. SpeakEasy Stage Company. Boston Center for the Arts. 527 Tremont St. South End. $25-$57. 617.933.8600. speakeasystage.com]