The Drowsy Chaperone: Canadian Company
Review by Jennie Barnes
Sprightly, frenetic, and utterly ebullient, the National Arts Centre and Citadel Theatre’s co-production of The Drowsy Chaperone is certainly not what its wearisome title suggests. Originally conceived as burlesque stag party entertainment by playwrights Don McKellar, Lisa Lambert, Greg Morrison and Bob Martin, this Tony award-winning Canadian show makes its Ottawa debut and runs in the NAC Theatre until October 31. Branded as a musical within a comedy, Drowsy ushers in the 40th season of English Theatre at the NAC with an apt fusion of wistfulness and mirth.
Even before the curtain rises, uproarious laughter seizes the audience. “You know what I do when I’m sitting in a darkened theatre waiting for the show to begin? I pray. Oh, dear God, please let it be a good show,” sighs Man in Chair (Jay Brazeau) a jittery, Zoloft-addicted divorcee seated at stage-left. But he need not fret; the cast of this vaudeville pastiche are anything but lackadaisical. As the middle-aged recluse sets his record player to his favourite 1920s revue, kaleidoscopic lighting (Gerald King) transforms the stage into a histrionic universe teeming with song, spit-takes and tap-dancing.
The Drowsy Chaperone, the musical to which the Man in Chair introduces us, mainly centres on Janet (Debbie Timuss) an ostentatious showgirl poised to abandon the limelight in order to marry Robert (John Ullyatt), an equally vainglorious oil magnate who spends a good part of the play blindfolded whilst roller-skating across the stage in a slapdash fashion. Scatterbrained wedding planner Mrs. Tottendale, played by veteran actor Nora McLellan, endears herself to the audience with her odd facial expressions and other such winsome foibles. Susan Gilmour skilfully portrays The Drowsy Chaperone’s eponymous heroine, an alcoholic duenna tasked with keeping the bride and groom apart prior to their nuptials.
Thom Allison steals the show as Aldopho, a stereotypical European playboy commissioned by Feldzieg (Mark Burgess), Janet’s frantic producer, to ruin the celebrity wedding. Other notable performances include Josh Epstein and Neil Minor as pastry-chef gangsters, Ryan Reid as best man, Julien Arnold as Underling the butler, Nathalie Marrable as Janet’s lacklustre successor and Lovena B. Fox as the Aviatrix.
Sumptuous stage design (Jean Claude Olivier) and flamboyant costumes (Phillip Clarkson) provide ample eye candy for the audience. In the wake of musical director Lloyd Nicholson’s untimely death days before opening, replacement Scott Davey does a superb job of conducting the on-stage band. Thirteen numbers with intentionally asinine titles such as “Cold Feets” and “Love is Always Lovely” breathe comical life into the hackneyed plotlines.
Man in Chair warns the audience that Janet’s “Bride’s Lament” is especially lame as the lead singer bemoans having put a “monkey on a pedestal” after a ludicrous argument with her fiancé. Admittedly, Man in Chair’s caveat could apply to the entire performance, which is largely satirical. In any event, director Max Reimer has categorically succeeded in staging a show “so bad that it’s good.”
Jennie Barnes is an undergraduate student at the University of Ottawa.
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