The Drowsy Chaperone pays homage to American musicals of the Jazz Age,
examining the effect musicals have on the fans who adore them.
The Man in Chair, a mousy, agoraphobic Broadway fanatic, seeking to cure
his "non-specific sadness", listens to a recording of the fictional
1928 musical comedy, The Drowsy Chaperone . As he listens to this
rare recording, he is transported into the musical. The characters appear in
his dingy apartment, and it is transformed into a glorious Broadway set
with seashell footlights, sparkling furniture, painted backdrops, and over
the top costumes.
The plot of the show-within-a-show centers on Janet Vandegraff,
a showgirl looking to give up the stage in order to marry an oil tycoon,
Robert Martin. However, Janet is the star of "Feldzieg's Follies", and Feldzieg,
her producer, is being threatened with bodily harm by two gangsters employed
by his chief investor. Disguised as pastry chefs, these two pun-happy thugs threaten
Feldzieg to stop the wedding, in order to ensure Janet's participation in the
next production of Feldzieg's Follies. In order to save himself, Feldzieg enlists Aldolpho,
a bumbling Latin Lothario, to seduce Janet and spoil her relationship with Robert.
What follows is a pastiche of every classic, clichéd plot thread ever to grace
the stage, including mistaken identities, dream sequences, spit takes involving
such stock characters as an unflappable English butler, an absent-minded dowager,
a ditzy chorine, a harried best man, and, last but certainly not least,
Janet's "Drowsy" (read "Tipsy") Chaperone.
