A veritable who’s who of Morgan-Wixson Theatre regulars, a director on a roll, and a crackerjack team of production designers join forces to make Broadway’s The Drowsy Chaperone the all-around best Morgan-Wixson musical I’ve reviewed since first raving about their Thoroughly Modern Millie back in 2009.

The multiple 2006 Tony Award winner is sure to prove a particular treat for those who, like its rhapsodic narrator Man In Chair (Michael Heimos), could neither live nor breathe without a collection of Original Broadway Cast recordings around to brighten moments when a little self-conscious anxiety results in non-specific sadness, a state that Man In Chair likes to call “blue.”

Tops among our host’s abundant collection of records (yes, records) is the “largely forgotten” 1928 Broadway chestnut The Drowsy Chaperone, whose latest listening transports Man In Chair from his modest studio apartment to the elegant foyer of Tottendale Manor, where guests have gathered to celebrate the wedding of Broadway star Janet Van de Graff (Holly Weber) to oil tycoon Robert Martin (Christopher Tiernan).

Along for the ride are Follies impresario Feldzeig (Richard R. Rosales) and his featherbrained girlfriend Kitty (Mirai Booth-Ong), a pair of gangsters masquerading as pastry chefs (Steve Weber and Deonté Allen), Robert’s best man George (Esteban Hurtado), Latin Lothario Aldolpho (Aric Martin), Janet’s Drowsy (i.e. tipsy) Chaperone (Janet Krajeski), short-term-amnesia-prone lady of the manor Mrs. Tottendale (AnnaLisa Erickson), her loyal Underling (Daniel Koh), and a gal-loving aviatrix named Trix (Jenáe Denise Thompson).

All of this adds up to as thoroughly entertaining a musical as Broadway has seen this century (Tony-winning music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison, Tony-winning book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar), and with director Kristie Mattsson surpassing herself and a couldn’t-be-better cast making The Drowsy Chaperone’s now iconic cast of characters entirely their own, this is one lallapaloosa of a show.

Heimos’s gleeful, glorious Man In Chair not only knows his Broadway trivia backwards and forwards, he makes it poignantly clear how a record collection can hold a man back from the edge of despair. (It helps too that Mattsson has found added ways to integrate Man In Chair into the show-within-a-show.)

Krajeski’s martini-dry Chaperone allows Little Women’s maternal Marmie to get back to boozing it up like Company’s Joanne, and hilariously so, especially when paired with a divinely over-the-top Martin, whose scenery-chewing Aldolpho is so downright delicioso, he deserves his own Drowsy Chaperone spin-off.

Fresh from her breakout performance in The Wedding Singer, Weber’s flame-red triple-threat stunner of a Janet earns added snaps for some gravity-defying cartwheels.

Tiernan’s Robert Martin reveals suave leading man chops beneath Seussical’s Cat In The Hat fur, and when he joins Hurtado’s adorably effervescent George in “Cold Feet,” the dynamic duo’s taptastic duet proves one of the evening’s biggest showstoppers.

Rosales gives Golden Era Hollywood treasure Eugene Pallette (look him up) some stiff competition in the portly tough guy department opposite Booth-Ong’s stepping-out-of-the-chorus-and-into-the-spotlight Kitty, who proves that a brunette can be as deliciously dim-witted as the proverbial dumb blonde.

Erickson (whose memory-lapse-prone Mrs. Tottendale hides considerable depth beneath the ditz) and Koh (the most properly British of Underlings) not only have great chemistry but display a knack for spit-take after spit-take.

Weber and Allen do their own scene-stealing as a pair of split-second in sync comic Gangsters, and big-voiced Thompson’s sassy Trix’s eleventh-hour appearance is one well worth waiting for.

Mattson ups Drowsy Chaperone’s original Broadway ensemble of four to a sensational sextet of multi-taskers (Jake Asaro, Chris Clonts, Audrey Pennington, Serenity Robb, and Krystyna Rodriguez) whose array of reporters, servants, aviators, and monkeys (yes, monkeys) merit their own cheers, as does choreographer Niko Montelibano, whose restaging of Christopher Albrecht’s original dance moves serves up one delightful production number after another.

Tristan Griffin’s scenic design not only looks terrific as Man In Chair’s shades-of-gray studio apartment but even more so when it morphs ingeniously into The Drowsy Chaperone’s more colorful locales.

Mattsson’s and Elizabeth Cox Hludzik’s dazzling array of 1920s costumes could give the original Broadway production a run for its money, with William Wilday’s lighting design, Meredith Wright’s properties, and Alejandro Bermudez’s wigs and makeup earning their own kudos.

Last but not least, Greg Rutledge’s sound design allows amped voices and prerecorded tracks to fill the Morgan-Wixson as I don’t ever recall it being filled before, eliminating acoustic issues that plagued the recent The Wedding Singer.

The Drowsy Chaperone is produced by Man In Chair Heimos and Kalila Horwitz is associate producer. Wilday is technical director. Montelibano and dance captain Kelly Ciurczak are swings.

Over its nearly seventy-five-year history (and in particular over the ten years I’ve been reviewing Morgan-Wixson productions), the venerable Santa Monica institution has repeatedly blurred the lines between community and professional-theater musicals, but never more so than in The Drowsy Chaperone. Man In Chair himself would be proud indeed.

Morgan-Wixson Theatre, 2627 Pico Boulevard, Santa Monica.
www.morgan-wixson.org

–Steven Stanley
October 6, 2019
Photos: JDC Photography

Tags: Bob Martin, Don McKellar, Greg Morrison, Lisa Lambert, Los Angeles Theater Review, Morgan-Wixson Theatre