Tony Award-winning show, 'The Drowsy Chaperone,' salutes Jazz Age musicals

“The Drowsy Chaperone,” the Tony Award-winning musical within a comedy, has settled in for a month-long run at San Francisco’s Orpheum Theater through Sunday, Aug. 17.

An homage to American musicals of the Jazz Age, the sparkling Broadway export speaks to anyone who has ever been transported by the theater.

“The Drowsy Chaperone” tells the story of a modern- day musical theater addict known simply as “Man in Chair.” Act one begins with this mousy, vaguely depressive Broadway fanatic whose coping mechanism involves listening to a recording of a 1928 stage show, “The Drowsy Chaperone.”

When he first turns on his phonograph and static breaks from the speakers, he wistfully tells the audience, “I love that sound. To me, that’s the sound of a time machine starting up.” By the time the first note sails out of his speakers, he’s been transported to a magical dream world, one where the actors in the recording enter his dingy apartment and transform it into a gloriously garish set complete with seashell footlights, sparkly peacocks, glittery sugarplum trees and costumes that would put the Ice Capades to shame.

The show-within-a-show centers on a vain showgirl, who is about to marry a man she only just met, and her cigar-chomping producer, who doesn’t want to lose his valuable starlet. What follows is a pastiche of every clichéd plot thread ever written, including mistaken identity, spit-takes and gangsters on the lam, involving such campy characters as an all-knowing English butler, a Latino lothario and a daffy, cartwheeling heroine.

Watching from his armchair, Man in Chair is torn between his desire to absorb every moment of the play as it unfolds and to insert his own personal footnotes as he continuously brings the audience in and out of the fantasy.

The recipient of 13 major awards, “The Drowsy Chaperone” received more Tony Awards than any other musical of the 2006 season, including Best Book (Bob Martin and Don McKellar), Original Score (Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison), Costume Design (Gregg Barnes) and Scenic Design (David Gallo).

The cast for this North American touring company includes film and TV star, Georgia Engel (“The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Everybody Loves Raymond”) who reprises her Broadway role of Mrs. Tottendale for the tour. Canadian actor Jonathan Crombie, who is widely known for playing Gilbert Blythe in the popular “Anne of Green Gables” movies, plays the musical-loving Man in Chair.

Tickets for “The Drowsy Chaperone” range in price from $30 to $99 and can be purchased online at shnsf.com, through Ticketmaster by calling (415) 512-7770 or at the Orpheum Theater Box Office (1192 Market at 8th St., Monday-Saturday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.).

Performances are scheduled through Aug. 17 at 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, with Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m.

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