The set is dotted with window cards from Busker Alley,
Mack & Mabel, My One and Only, On Your Toes, and Sugar Babies --
not to mention framed playbills from Damn Yankees, The Sound of Music, and
The Music Man. On a shelf is a little porcelain statuette of Anna and the
King who have obviously decided that indeed, they shall dance.
Quick! For what show is this set? Why, The Drowsy Chaperone, of course,
now having its first regional production at Stages in St. Louis.
Will the Show-Me State welcome this show about a musical theater enthusiast
extraordinaire? In New York, plenty of people understand Man in Chair�s passion
for an ancient musical; in the rest of the country, the less-interested might
not.
But no sooner has Man in Chair introduced the audience to that 1928 musical
sensation -- Gable and Stein�s The Drowsy Chaperone � they�re having a
terrific time. hublot replica Oh, they agree with Man�s warning that �the characters are
two-dimensional and the plot is well-worn� � but they don�t care a whit. They�re
charmed by the engaged Robert and Janet; his best man George; the two gangsters
pretending to be as pastry chefs; blustery producer Feldzieg (get it?); his
dim-witted blonde Kitty; the vainglorious Adolpho, and of course "The Drowsy
Chaperone" herself.
This crowd is definitely in on the joke, aware that the show's a silly piece of
fluff -- but they love the entertainment value that such fluff routinely offered
way-back-when. hublot replica sale They chortle at the pastry/gangsters� puns (�One cannoli hope.
Now you�re in truffle and there�s muffin you can do about it.�) Some audience
members groan, of course, in that knee-jerk reaction that certain people have
with puns, but most of the crowd think the gags are just swell. (�Have you ever
spent any time in a coma?� �No, but I have a cousin in Seattle.�)
Midway through �Cold Feet,� as David Elder and Brian Ogilvie hoof it up as
Robert and George, the woman sitting next to me can�t help but utter a �Wow!� --
as enthusiastic as Man in Chair could ever be over the way this material is
dynamically delivered. rolex replica When Janet sings that she doesn�t �want to show off no
more,� the entire crowd coos as she spins plates and does all those other tricks
they used to enjoy on The Ed Sullivan Show eons ago.
After many a number, David Schmittou, who�s an excellent Man, must pretend to
catch his breath and swallow in excitement in order to let the audience to
applaud as long as they want to � which is considerable. fake rolex sale Even though he warns
them that �the Monkey number� isn�t much good, they go ape over it. As far as
they�re concerned, Sondheim tomorrow; musical comedy tonight.
All right, but Man in Chair does have a gay sensibility, and Schmittou, under
Michael Hamilton�s loving direction, plays it. Happily, the audience members
don�t distance themselves from him. While they laugh at Man�s incessant zeal for
a mere musical, they�re not mocking him, but enjoying him.
Their indulgence may be rooted in Man�s being an old-world gay who gets deeply
ashamed when he makes an inadvertent double entendre. However, he�s more ashamed
of us after we cackle at his observation that �The Oops Girl caused men in the
audience to have accidents.� We�re the ones with dirty minds, he points out,
when he testily explains that what he meant was that they spilled their drinks.
Man does experience embarrassment when he gets a lit-tle too close to the
on-stage hunky men whom he so admires. fake watches Finally, when he makes a passing
reference to porno, he�s suddenly sorry he revealed so much of himself. Because
the crowd enjoys seeing him so flustered, they forgive whatever this closeted
man has in his closet.
It may well be a nice indication of how the hinterlands now accept gays with
tolerance and indulgence that would have been unknown just a generation or so
earlier. Sure, there�s still a rigid segment of society that doesn�t like when
gays so-call �flaunt it,� but because Man and Schmittou don�t, they give their
forbearance. So when he asks the crowd, �Are you surprised I was married?� he
gets a titanic laugh.
Of course, another reason that the crowd responds so well is that the cast is
wondrous. In the role of the title character whose brain has been marinated in
100% proof gin, Christianne Tisdale is superb. She conveys all the legendary
quality of Beatrice Stockwell; when she starts �As We Stumble Along,� she offers
a quick double-nod, as if to say, �Here it is � the song you�ve been waiting
for.� She also has a star�s assurance that the audience has always loved hearing
her do this tune, and will be charmed by her and it once more. Tisdale also
makes some miraculous moves with her body; she can arch her back to such a
degree that she almost mirrors the marvelous structure down by the Mississippi
River. But when the number ends, she suddenly falls back on her tush in such a
way that she doesn�t appear to have fallen, but that she�s been taken down by a
sudden gust of gravity.
John Alban Coughlan plays to perfection Underling the Butler. He gives many a
dour frown when his bosses or guests make unreasonable or stupid demands,
showing that he is of a higher station and has better taste than they. Coughlan
has undoubtedly and thoroughly studied Eric Blore and Edward Everett Horton, and
has distilled the best of them. As time goes by, Underling has the chance to
open up and even dance a little. Coughlan allows the butler to convey,
�Unaccustomed as I am to public dancing, now that I�ve been called upon to do
it, yes, I can, just as I can fulfill any request you make of me. Just leave
everything to me.�
As Janet Van De Graaf, Tari Kelley can deliver a knowing wink as well as
Christine Baranski can. Kari Ely is much different from original caster Georgia
Engel as Mrs. Tottendale; she�s not nearly as ditsy, but just as effective. Ed
Romanoff shines when he tells the talent-free Kitty (Melinda Cowan), �For the
last time, you don�t got what it takes� in a voice that says, �This hurts me
more than it hurts you.� Patrick Martin is super as the Super who must make a
quick trip to the fuse box but upon his leave, fully admits to Man that he likes
musicals. (This happens after Man has told the Super that he doesn�t � arguably
the worst denial since the apostle Peter said he wasn�t connected to Jesus
Christ.)
But it�s Schmittou�s show. He makes cleaning the record (yes, record) an act of
love. With the fervor of an Egyptologist trying to decipher the Rosetta Stone,
he�s hilarious as he tries to figure out a word on the cast album that�s
obscured by a dropped cane. What delight he shows as he wiggles a forefinger in
the air when the gangsters (Ben Nordstrom and Michael Baxter) dance their
�Toledo Surprise.� He steeples his hands over his nose as he intently watches a
scene, and his face is full of disappointment when the show is even too silly
for him. But that same face beams when he hears a beloved joke that he�s heard
hundreds of times � but each time, for the first time.
How he cares for this 1928 musical! He�s aghast when Elder, on roller skates, is
perilously close to falling over. And when he joins Janet and Robert on
�Accident Waiting to Happen,� he eventually pulls back, as he sees they�re
getting romantic and he�s the fifth wheel. He bites his tongue through his teeth
in delight when Roman Pirelli (Edward Juvier) says Aldopho�s name very fast (�Adlfo!�),
and applauds Adolpho with that deliberate kind of handclapping that says, �Oh,
come on, admit it, he was great� � giving the same type of applause that Douglas
Breen gave Sally Ross during her opening night of Never Say Never
(except, of course, that Man in Chair is much more benign than Breen).
It�s also the type of entertainment that Schmittou himself could use right now,
for less than a week before this Friday night performance, his father had a
heart attack, was on life support for days, and then died. Schmittou has been
fitting in performances between a memorial service and the burial, and while he
does miss one Saturday matinee to attend the latter (it�s a four-mile drive from
St. Louis), he�s on stage for all the others. Compare this to all those
performers on Broadway who�d miss a performance if they got paper cuts.
How difficult this must be for Schmittou, given that Bob Martin and Don
McKellar�s script has such lines as �In the real world, nothing ever works out�
and that he needs The Drowsy Chaperone �to take me away� from �the
dreary horrors of the real world� on a day when he�s �a little anxious for no
particular reason,� �feeling a little blue myself� and �a little sad.� I�m sure
that the fully entertained audience would be stunned to hear that Schmittou was
experiencing the most difficult of circumstances.
All this unfolds in front of a sold-out house. Executive producer Jack Lane
informs me that Stages is in the black, with no deficit whatsoever. That
situation is quite rare for a regional theater, but with productions such as
these, a cast as talented, and a leading man with the quintessential �The Show
Must Go On� attitude, there�s no wonder that Stages is doing as well as it is.
|
