“Show Off” for Follies star Janet Van De Graaf, stays in as the show’s best tune and is given a tremendous performance by Andrea Chamberlain. On the plus side, we learn more of the pitiful life of the Man in Chair. Now the show ends with a twist that some may find unnecessary or saccharine. Tottendale (Georgia Engel) and her servant Underling (Robert Dorfman) that the Man in Chair claims is boring actually is boring. Though the musical and dance aspects of the show have been beefed up, somehow the relation of theatre mogul Feldzieg (Cliff Bemis) and the ditzy showgirl Kitty (Marla Mindelle) is not as funny as it was and neither are the two gangsters (Paul and Peter Riopelle). On the minus side, fans of the show’s previous incarnations will miss many of the eight songs that have been cut. Now the show is more exuberant and more theatrical and calls greater attention to very flimsiness of the artifice it seems to celebrate. Gregg Barnes’s continual costumes changes fill the stage with colour and as does Nicholaw’s lively choreography with movement. Where the new production succeeds magnificently over the old is in David Gallo’s gradual, wildly inventive transformation of this apartment into numerous, increasingly fabulous locales in the musical. As he explains the silly plot and gives us inane footnotes on the original performers, the musical comes to life in his depressing basement apartment. What has not changed is the genial presence of Bob Martin as the Man in Chair, the frowsy, fanatical but self-deprecating lover of old musicals, who one day decides to drive away the blues by playing an LP of his favourite show The Drowsy Chaperone, supposedly written in 1928. In the end it took American producers and American director Casey Nicholaw to ask for major cuts and rewrites to make the small-scale show work on a big stage. As has now become legend, what began in 1998 as a wedding gift from Greg Morrison and Lisa Lambert to Bob Martin and his fiancée was reworked for the Fringe, transferred for a run at Theatre Passe Muraille and was reworked again in 2001 for a run at the Winter Garden Theatre for Mirvish Productions. This is the show that has had producers prowling the Fringe in search of the next “Drowsy”, though so far no Canadian musical has had so much success in New York even if it was not crowned “Best Musical”. The Drowsy Chaperone, the 1999 Fringe Festival hit that turned into a 2006 Tony Award-winning musical, is back in town and inaugurates Dancap Productions as a challenge to Mirvish. The number is never fully performed, however, because The Man in the Chair always comes back in the middle of the song to stop the track and put on the correct record of The Drowsy Chaperone.Music and lyrics by Greg Morrison and Lisa Lambert,ĭancap Productions, Elgin Theatre, Toronto That was Beatrice Stockwell as “American Lady,” and did you recognize Roman Bartelli as the Emperor? Yes, he was a man of a thousand accents-all of them insulting. A slap in the face to four thousand years of Chinese history. The Man in the Chair describes it as:Ī degrading piece of Chinoiserie about an Emperor who is told by a magic bird to marry his American Elocutionist instead of his betrothed and he ends up building the Great Wall of China. Joltingly playful, the number harkens to The King and I and features the characters from Drowsy playing parts in another Gable and Stein show called The Enchanted Nightingale. As he left the audience to go to the bathroom, we’re left to sit and watch the wrong musical. The idea is that the Man in the Chair has put on the wrong record when switching to Act II. This number is performed right after the intermission, after Act 1 Finale. (sung) The people of the world are varied But differences are in the plan The onry difference I can see That means anything to me Is the one between a rady and a man Don't you mean lady? Rrrrady Precisely! (sung) What is it about the Asians? What is it about Caucasians? What makes them so astounding? What makes them so confounding? It's you! Message from a nightingale Song Ahh. (sung) What is it about the Asians That fascinates Caucasians? What is it about the Asians That's so nice? Is it the won-tons? The egg rolls? The rice? Perhaps it's Buddha or Confucius and their excellent advice What is it about Caucasians That mystifies we Asians? What is it about Caucasians that's so odd? They call a pletty rady a broad They have hair upon their chest And they onry have one god? Impossible! Oh, Emperor, you're so light on your feet. You no bow? Empelor and American rady no see eye to eye But Emperor, sometimes a different outlook can change your point of view. Nightingale, nightingale Nightingale, song -ong-ong-ong-ong Nightingale, ahhh! I bling a message From a nightingale I bling a message From a nightingale
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