THE DROWSY CHAPERONE

The Drowsy Chaperone is a valentine to musical theater. Written by Bob Martin and Don McKellar (book) and Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison (score), this imaginative, critically acclaimed show was the recipient of five Tony Awards in 2006, including Best Book and Best Score.

The show is set in the apartment of the lonely, witty Man in Chair, who serves as narrator and commentator for the evening. He puts on a favorite cast album of an obscure 1920s musical called The Drowsy Chaperone, and as he shares his enthusiasm and observations about the show with the audience, the effervescent musical springs to life in his drab apartment.

The show within the show is about the upcoming wedding of Robert Martin and Janet Van De Graaff, and takes place at the home of Mrs. Tottendale.

In addition to writing the show, Martin originated the role of Man in Chair and was nominated for a Tony Award as Best Actor in a Musical. He and Lambert discussed the evolution of The Drowsy Chaperone.

ORIGINS

There were several incarnations of The Drowsy Chaperone prior to Broadway. How did it begin?

Martin: “It was a gift for my wedding in 1998. It was performed at a stag and doe party. Lisa was my best man – she’s my oldest friend – so it was her responsibility to arrange entertainment for the party. I had said ‘no strippers.’ She rallied together a lot of my friends who are writers, performers and comedians in Toronto and they wrote this short, fictional, 1920s musical called The Drowsy Chaperone. It was about a half hour to 40 minutes long. It was fully costumed, but there was no Man in Chair. It was performed at a club called the Rivoli in downtown Toronto, and it was actually advertised. I think it said, ‘Come to Bob and Janet’s stag.’ So people whom I’d never met were at my stag party.”

Lambert: “It was a night of songs and sketches, all focusing on the upcoming marriage of Bob Martin and Janet Van De Graaff, and featuring the premiere of a new musical, The Drowsy Chaperone. I played The Drowsy Chaperone and Don McKellar played Aldolpho. We had a big opening number that was a processional, where everyone came out and introduced themselves. It was called “De Graaff.” Everything rhymed with Janet’s name.”

Martin: “The show was in two halves, and The Drowsy Chaperone was the second half of the show. The first half was monologues and comic bits and little songs from different people. There’s a misconception that the original stag party show was only a bunch of sketches, and I think that’s because the first half of the evening was sketches. But Drowsy was already a book musical – just a short one.”

What remains of the original Drowsy?

Lambert: “The plot of the musical that the Man in Chair is listening to is very much like what we put on at the bachelor party, and the characters are the same. There were about six songs in that version, and two of them remain: ‘I Am Aldolpho’ and ‘Accident Waiting to Happen.’”

TORONTO FRINGE FESTIVAL

How did you take that next step to the Toronto Fringe Festival in 1999?

Martin: “We had done many shows at the Fringe, Lisa and I in particular, but also Lisa with other people. There was so much good in this show, and it seemed like the right project to take there. The songs were so good, and it was the type of show that we liked, where all of the comic performers are given their moment in the spotlight. So we decided to enter the Fringe lottery with this show.”

Lambert: “There was a group of us in Toronto who had written a number of these pastiche musicals. One was like a combination of Finian’s Rainbow and Brigadoon, and another was like Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar. When we did the bachelor party, it was the first time we’d done one of these shows without any overall concept or narrative voice. We just did it. But we knew that if we actually wanted it to go further, we needed a device, a narrative voice. We all thought Drowsy Chaperone felt incomplete. After the bachelor party, we needed to work on the concept. We had the chance to do that when we got into the Fringe. We were the second group chosen. It was incredible luck. We could just as easily not have gotten in that year.”

Martin: “My wife paid for the Fringe entry fee. I always like to say that, because she was actually the first producer of The Drowsy Chaperone.”

In addition to the new character of Man in Chair, how else did the show change when it was at the Toronto Fringe Festival?

Lambert: “The Drowsy Chaperone didn’t have a song at the bachelor party. She just sang the Aldolpho song with Aldolpho. For this production, Drowsy got a song called “Overrated World,” which has since been cut. I think one other number was added as well. But the show didn’t really change a huge amount from the bachelor party. One difference was that at the bachelor party, we had the character of Mrs. Tottendale, which Georgia Engel eventually played on Broadway. That character was replaced by Mimi the Maid at the Fringe. But Mimi was ousted and Mrs. Tottendale returned when we did our production at the Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto.”

When you performed at the Fringe Festival, was the cast essentially the same as at the wedding, with the addition of Bob?

Lambert: “Yes. There might have been a couple of changes, but it was basically the same group.”

THEATRE PASSE MURAILLE AND WINTER GARDEN THEATRE

How did the show wind up at the Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto?

Lambert: “We were a really big hit at the Fringe. We were breaking box office records, and it was the show to see. A guy named John Karastamatis, who is the head of public relations at Mirvish Productions, saw one of the last performances. He went back to Mirvish Productions and said, ‘We should do this show.’ They said they needed to see another production, just to make sure. So John produced what would be the equivalent of an off-Broadway tryout in Toronto at a theater called Passe Muraille. It did really well at the box office, the Mirvishes saw it, and they said, ‘Okay, we’ll produce it.’”

Is this when the cast changed?

Lambert: “It changed between the Fringe and Theatre Passe Muraille – not a huge amount, but somewhat. And then again, from Theatre Passe Muraille to the Winter Garden, the cast changed somewhat again.”

Martin: “As the show became more complicated musically, it got beyond the ability of some of our comedian friends. That’s when we started having to change the cast. For instance, Janet played Janet Van De Graaff at the Fringe and at Theatre Passe Muraille. But she opted out after that, and Karen Hines took over the role for the Winter Garden production.”

Lambert: “I played The Drowsy Chaperone all through Toronto. The song that I had at that point was a patter song that really wasn’t much of a tune – it was just patter lyrics. The patter song was really good in a small venue, but when we got into the Winter Garden, it was clear that we needed something different if the show would have a life beyond this production. As the show grew, we realized we needed more for this character.”

Martin: “We knew at the Winter Garden that in order for the show to be successful, the musical within the show had to be fully realized. Some of the reviews even said that. The reviews were not fabulous for the Winter Garden production. People were saying, ‘It would be nice to hear some real voices. It would be nice to see some real dancing.’ And we realized that as well. We knew there had to be two separate worlds: the dreary world of the Man’s apartment, and this full-blown musical that wasn’t in any way a comment on a musical. It was a musical with real voices and real dancing.”

Lambert: “Initially, The Drowsy Chaperone was very much a comedy. As the Man in Chair character grew, a lot of the comedy and the commenting was taken away from the characters in the show within the show, and given to Man in Chair. The balance shifted, so it was more and more important that the show within the show was focused on the musical, and the jokes would come from Man in Chair.”

Lisa, was it hard for you to let go of performing in the show?

Lambert: “It wasn’t even an issue for me. I like performing in small venues, where I’m demonstrating my songs and singing comically. Being in a show in a big theater requires a different kind of performance, and when we did the Winter Garden, it was clear to me that this kind of performing wasn’t for me. And the idea of seeing who was going to play the part and how it was going to work was actually very exciting. It was great to be able to feed the character to somebody else and let it blossom. So it was actually kind of a relief when I could step back and just think about lyric writing.”

When you were at the Winter Garden, was there talk of the show going to Broadway?

Lambert: “No, none at all. Roy Miller, who would become one of our Broadway producers, came and saw the show at the Winter Garden very late into the run. It was probably the last weekend. This was in 2001. And we thought, ‘Oh, there’s an American producer here who’s maybe thinking of doing something with it.’ But that was about it. We thought maybe it could continue on somewhere. But the idea of Broadway was not something we thought about.”

Martin: “Roy had a producing partner, and they bought the rights. But it was a couple of years before anything happened with the show.”

BROADWAY

What finally propelled the show forward?

Lambert: “Roy shopped the script around for a few years in New York, but nothing happened. Then in the fall of 2004, we did a reading at NAMT’s Festival of New Musicals. That’s the National Alliance for Musical Theatre. Every year in the fall they have a festival of new works. They choose about eight or ten musicals, and each are given a 45-minute reading. They’re staged readings – music, scripts, a little bit of moving around. Only industry people are invited.”

Martin: “We barely got into the festival. We were the last pick. And there was a lot of controversy about it – we made it in by one vote. People didn’t get it. It’s really hard to communicate what the show is just by reading it.”

Lambert: “They thought that some of Man in Chair’s saucy comments would offend people. Anyway, Roy Miller put a really good cast together for NAMT. And we were fortunate that our show was very easy to edit down to 45 minutes because of Man in Chair. It’s a device that can whip things along. So we were able to put together a really good 45 minutes of material, and take out stuff from the Toronto production that we knew we didn’t want to keep anyway. It was a great writing experience – edit it down to its bare bones with material we really liked. The show went over incredibly well.”

Martin: “We did two performances, and both ran overtime because of the laughter and applause. In the second performance, the Festival people actually came onstage and stopped the show because it was too long. The whole audience started booing. It was a huge success.”

Lambert: “Kevin McCollum [one of the show’s Broadway producers] was at that performance. He saw something was going on. It was like an event.”

Martin: “Once Kevin came on board, after the years and years of waiting, we were on Broadway within a year and a half.”

What further changes were there?

Martin: “From the Winter Garden to the Ahmanson, about 60 percent of the show was changed. [The Drowsy Chaperone had an engagement at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles prior to Broadway. This is when Casey Nicholaw came on board as director.] We changed a lot of the dialogue, a lot of the music. We changed so many big numbers. We changed the opener, we changed the closer. We cut huge numbers from the show.”

Lambert: “There was restructuring and song changes. The order of songs was changed, and a new opening song was written. A new song was written for The Drowsy Chaperone, the end of the show was completely different. We now reprise The Drowsy Chaperone’s song as the closer [“As We Stumble Along”]. We used to have a big Latin dance number to close the show.”

Martin: “In general, it became more of a one-man show with a musical crammed inside, which is what it always should have been. So there was a more complete story of Man in Chair, more was revealed about him. That’s why I say it’s about 60 percent different from what it was – I rewrote everything for myself. The whole arc was finally correct. And the ending is very different. The Rio number that we’d had there used to be the biggest production number in the show. It was a tongue-in-cheek celebration. It’s not just that we have a different song there now. The tone of the ending is completely different.”

MAN IN CHAIR

Man in Chair is such a wonderfully funny, sad character. His comments and observations on the current state of theater are wonderful. That opening monologue is spot-on and hilarious. Bob, were you expressing your own feelings, or collective feelings about theater in that monologue?

Martin: “I’m expressing a collective point of view, although it’s a little bit extreme. Remember that this was written in 1998, 1999. Shows were very big and earnest at that time. And there was really no fun – the fun was gone. There were a lot of ‘message’ shows. The character was inspired by several different people. But in terms of his perspective, the idea of an evening at the theater being so disappointing so often, part of that came from an experience that I had. I was in a show – I don’t remember what it was – at a subscription theater. I could hear this couple arguing in the audience. This was right before the show began. He was saying, ‘Why do we do this? We come here year after year. Why do we do this?’ It was such a sincere expression of the frustration and disappointment you feel at the theater. You want so much more than you generally get. Because when it does work, it’s a fantastic, transformational, beautiful experience. But more often than not, it doesn’t work. And that became the central core of Man in Chair’s character: ‘Please let it be a good show.’ He says that right at the beginning.

“When we were developing the show for the Winter Garden, it was the director of that production, Daniel Brooks, who suggested the line ‘I hate theater’ to begin the show. I was a little hesitant at first. I wrote a ton of material for Man in Chair while doing that production. Daniel is one of those dramaturges who is always saying, ‘Try this, try this, try this.’ So I had tons of material that I drew from when we were developing the Broadway show. That line was a key addition.”

Lambert: “We [the creative team] talked about the concept of Man in Chair, what kind of approach Bob would take. The jokes are all Bob’s. The wit of Man in Chair is very much Bob. Man in Chair’s opinions sometimes are reflective of what we think, and other times Bob was just writing in that character’s voice. Sentiments like ‘don’t break the fourth wall’ and ‘let the show not be too long,’ are definitely feelings that Bob has had. Those are feelings we all share. The catty remarks all the way through the show about various characters were written in the character’s voice. But a lot of that opening monologue is definitely heartfelt.”

Who was the inspiration for Man in Chair?

Martin: “We made an off-hand remark, a joke, in front of a reporter that the character was based on one individual, a critic. He actually talked about it on radio, and later wrote about it in the paper. But it wasn’t true.

It became this huge thing because of an off-hand remark we made in front of a reporter. A lesson learned. Basically, when we first decided to go in this direction we were in Greg’s basement. And I immediately jumped into the character, with a couple of suggestions from Greg, Lisa and Don. I just started doing it. It was an instantly recognizable character. There’s a sort of theater queen quality to him – the whole back story of him not being comfortable with his sexuality grew gradually. But it was really about the unbridled enthusiasm he has for his subject. We called him Creepy Man for a long time because his energy was kind of creepy.”

Lambert: “One of the reasons we called him Creepy Man was because we had an image of watching the show within the show and having somebody creeping around behind and through it. It wasn’t so much that he was a creepy person. It was that he was creeping around, he was in the background looking in, he was slinking through it. It was more of a visual that we started with, that there should be some weird person slithering through.”

Martin: “There certainly were some individuals who inspired this character because of their enthusiasm. But he was definitely a recognizable creation. We sort of knew him. He was an iconic person to us right away. Much of it actually came from Lisa. Lisa is more of a Man in Chair than I am.”

Lambert: “Man in Chair’s witty comments are probably more like Bob. But the behavior, of getting angry at the telephone – that’s me.”

Martin: “Part of the physicality of the character – and I’ve never said this to Lisa before – came from when we’d see a movie, and she’d be sitting next to me and I’d be staring at the screen with my mouth open, nodding. She pointed out to me once that I get embarrassingly lost in something that I’m watching. That’s part of the character.”

Lambert (laughing): “So you were sort of imitating yourself?”

Martin: “Yes, I was sort of imitating myself.”

Lambert: “I have to say that if I’m watching a musical I really like, I can have that face too, believe me. I was watching My Fair Lady the other day, and I had that face.”

Lisa, I was told that you’re the musical theater maven of the artistic team.

Lambert: “I’m probably the most like Man in Chair in that I grew up listening to my mother’s cast recordings and taking them to my room and listening to them over and over again and dancing around. I’m probably the most like Man in Chair in the sense that I could sing through a score of a musical pretty easily. But the encyclopedic knowledge of musicals, including obscure musicals, is more Don McKellar. He’s brilliant at retaining information. So it’s probably a cross between the two of us.”

RESEARCH

How much research was done by all of you to get the tone and the details right?

Lambert: “When we were in high school we used to hang out a lot and watch Fred and Ginger movies, and Marx Brothers movies. It’s something that we’ve loved over the years. When we actually got to writing this piece, the information was already there for us to play with. The only major research Greg did was about the sound of the Jazz Age.”

Martin: “Music, orchestrations, costumes, sets. There was research about all that, for sure. And Don and I also did research about language and idiomatic expressions.”

Lambert: “There wasn’t a huge amount of concentrated research at the time we were writing it, because we were always playing with the period. It was just years of being into that stuff, and it was ready to come out.”

Let’s talk about the inspiration for a few of the characters. I think that if you’re familiar with the movies of the thirties, it’s obvious who some of these characters are modeled after, and that makes it even funnier. For instance, Aldolpho.

Lambert: “Aldolpho initially was based on a character played by Erik Rhodes in two of the early Fred and Ginger movies, The Gay Divorcee and Top Hat. He says, ‘Chance is the fool’s name for fate’ [in The Gay Divorcee]. Initially, that’s who Aldolpho was.”

Martin: “Aldolpho is also a stock type of character. It’s the pretentious European who’s made fun of – in Marx Brothers films too. There’s a pompous, pretentious European that Americans loved to make fun of in that period.”

What about Mrs. Tottendale?

Lambert: “In the beginning, she was almost totally Margaret Dumont [The straight man – or woman – in numerous Marx Brothers movies]. And then the character started to evolve as people played her. When Georgia Engel came on board, she became more light and confused. The character really evolved with her. We rewrote a lot of her material after she was cast, so a lot of the material was written for her.”

Martin: “Actually, Mrs. Tottendale was already changing at the Winter Garden, where we had Judy Marshak play the role. She played the ukulele fabulously well, so she became Ukulele Lil there. [Ukulele Lil is the stage “name” of the actress who plays Mrs. Tottendale in the show within the show.] With Georgia, that just became a reference. But Ukulele Lil used to have a uke solo.”

With Mrs. Tottendale, you think of Margaret Dumont because of the character’s name – it’s such a Margaret Dumont kind of name.

Lambert: “The idea was really like Mrs. Rittenhouse in Animal Crackers. Mrs. Tottendale’s throwing a party, and you don’t really know why she’s hosting this particular party. In Animal Crackers, the party is for the unveiling of a painting in her house, but it’s not really clear why it’s happening in her house and why she’s hosting it. That was kind of the idea. Mrs. Tottendale is hosting the wedding because she happens to have the biggest house. It’s the only real explanation.”

The names of the songwriting team, Julie Gable and Sidney Stein – were they a tribute to Jule Styne?

Martin: “It was a reference, for sure. I made up the name.”

Lambert: “Bob’s really good at making names sound right, without being specific.”

Martin: “I also wanted to have one Jewish name and one non-Jewish name because Morrison and Lambert wrote our score. Lisa’s Jewish and Greg isn’t, so that’s where that came from.”

BOB MARTIN, PERFORMER

Bob, could you talk about your experience of playing Man in Chair on Broadway?

Martin: “It was a fabulous experience. All of a sudden I was redefined in a certain way. As soon as the show opened, I became a Broadway personality. And I never thought about myself that way. People in the street yelled, ‘I love you.’ It was very weird. I’d never had that level of celebrity before. We’re all very workmanlike, and we’re not caught up in the drama and the glamour of it. We were working through, and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting. When the show opened, we weren’t really focusing on the fact that this was the Broadway opening of The Drowsy Chaperone. We were just hoping that it worked. I was trying to remember all the changes. I was moving from moment to moment in the show, and not thinking about the fact that it was a Broadway opening. It was about a week later, when all the press started happening, and all these people were at the stage door, and we were getting into awards season, that I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is Broadway.’ I can safely say that my life has never been the same since. It was great, as a performer, to be accepted by the community so quickly. The Broadway community is unbelievably supportive and accepting. We were never judged as these unknowns from Canada.”

HIT BROADWAY MUSICAL

Why do you think the show took off the way it did?

Martin: “People appreciate original shows so much. And I think they saw that it was possible to come from the smallest possible origins and make it to Broadway. We had no pedigree – it’s not like it was another Sondheim show. The only recognizable stars were Georgia Engel and Sutton Foster [as Janet]. Everybody else was a kind of journeyman. It was Casey’s first show as a director. We had no American credits at all. We were completely unknown. And people really wanted it to work.”

Lambert: “We were sort of lucky in the sense that in the 2005-2006 season, we were the only ironic, comic show. Spamalot had arrived the year before. So we filled a certain slot. When we first wrote Drowsy in ’98 for the bachelor party, we felt that we were doing a new kind of approach to musicals. But as we worked on it, Urinetown and The Producers opened in New York. I was worried that maybe we were too late, because we were developing it when these ironic, cheeky, self-reflective shows were starting. But when we saw our show through, I realized that it has its own voice.”

Martin: “I think it’s an extremely simple concept, even though people say it’s so hard to describe. But ultimately, it’s just a celebration of theater. And people recognize Man in Chair as themselves. Husbands who are dragged to these shows get it right off the bat. It’s very accessible for both theater insiders and people who don’t really like or know musicals.”

When you look back, are you amazed by what happened?

Both: “Oh, yeah, yeah.”

Lambert: “As I understand more about how Broadway works and how hard it is to get anything going, I’m more and more amazed. At the time it was a whirlwind. But now, I still say every so often, ‘I can’t believe we got to Broadway.’”

Martin: “We were very lucky that Roy saw the show in Canada, and that after NAMT a million different things just fell into place. We were very lucky that a theater became available a few days before the Tony deadline. If that theater hadn’t become available, we wouldn’t have been in until the following season, and we probably would have waited until around December to open, because you don’t want to open a show in the summer. So by that time the momentum could have fallen away. It was still very hard for Kevin to get money for a show by unknowns with a weird title. All kinds of things went right for us. The casting worked out. Casey happened to want to direct and choreograph, and he was exactly the right person at exactly the right time. I realize now that timing is everything. We won five Tonys. Another season, we may not have done as well.”

MOVING FORWARD

What are each of you working on now?

Martin: “I’m working on Minsky’s, based on the 1968 movie The Night They Raided Minsky’s. It will open at the Ahmanson, like Drowsy did. Previews begin January 21 for a February 4 opening. I wrote the book. The composer is Charles Strouse, the lyricist is Susan Birkenhead, and it’s directed and choreographed by Casey. I also wrote a show with Tom Meehan in the summer called Elf. It’s a Christmas musical that we hope will be up at Christmas on Broadway in 2009.”

Lambert: “Through a series of strange connections, Greg and I were asked to write songs for a musical that Blake Edwards is writing. He had written a script based on an obscure movie of his from 1956 called He Laughed Last. The name of the musical is Big Rosemary. It’s a gangster story set in 1930s Chicago, about a practical joker mob boss who gets knocked off and leaves his empire to a show girl. It’s still in the beginning stages, and we’re not sure where it will go or what kind of life it will have. But we were down in L.A. working with Blake Edwards, and had the best time hearing stories about his movies and Hollywood. It’s been fascinating.”