I generally speaking like classical musicals. Anyone who reads this will have noted my dislike for Mr. Lloyd Webber (perhaps that’s Sir to you but you’ve got to earn it in my book) and utter failure to see Wicked; Schönberg and Boublil are artisans of dreck in my world. Yet peeking out of the land of desolation that is, to me, the world of musical theater post-Kander and Ebb, is a world of a few twinkling stars, musicals that actually succeed in being entertaining, telling a story, and sending me home with a song in my heart.
High in that constellation of stars is The Drowsy Chaperone, a show that, in its short-lived West End incarnation, proved life-changing for me in some ways (as it convinced me the West End Whingers’ blog was a source of genius tips on what to see, which led to, oh, writing this blog, eventually, and being a part of a “theater blogging community”); but which, most importantly, filled my head full of wonderful memories of sequins, tap dancing, high kicks (Summer Strallen!), and songs I’ve sung to myself ever since. I went twice in two weeks; I bought the soundtrack; I bought the t-shirt (“Oops Girl”); I went online and bought the monkey (probably best you not ask). I was sorry when it closed (prematurely, in my mind) and have spent a lot of time wondering why such a witty, musical show failed to find an audience when it had me crying in my Cosmopolitan; bad publicity, I think, was the cause. Still, it was a brilliant show and I will regularly pop the show disc in when I need a little pick-me-up.
Cue this summer and news that the Upstairs at the Gatehouse pub theater was remounting Drowsy. It seemed odd to me that a show so big and so new would be coming to such a small space (more recently home to
