Tanya Wilson concedes “The Drowsy Chaperone” is by no means a perfect musical.
The plot is well-worn, some of the scenes are forced with little to do with the actual plot and the characters a bit too stereotypical of productions from that era.
Little matter.
It’s her favorite, she explains, because of its light-hearted musical numbers and clever dialogue. Wilson is the story’s narrator, known simply as “Woman in Chair.”
The Allen County Community College production opens tonight at the Bowlus Fine Arts Center. The curtain rises at 7:30. Tickets sell for $6 for adults and $4 for students at the door or in advance at Iola Pharmacy.
Best described as a “musical within a musical,” the play breaks down the mythical “fourth wall” of entertainment, with Wilson — a self-described fan of long-ago musicals — on hand to explain why the production is her guilty pleasure.
The story is simplistic.
A young Broadway starlet, Janet Van De Graaff, is about to be married to a dashing oil magnate, thus putting a ceremonious end to her performing career.
But Fieldzieg, the musical’s producer, has other plans. Losing his leading lady could be costly in more ways than one, he learns, courtesy of a pair of gangsters who remind him that their boss is one of the play’s leading investors and eager to see the show continue.
Fieldzieg hatches a scheme or two to thwart the wedding, including bringing in an outrageous Latin heartthrob, Andolpho, to seduce the young starlet.
Can Fieldzieg bust up the wedding before he loses a kneecap? Will Janet and her fiance, Robert Martin, find true love and happiness? Will she ever get the proper guidance from her “drowsy” (and half-drunk) chaperone?
Without giving away too much of the plot, Wilson reminds the audience that it is a musical, after all, which invariably has a happy ending, with a few twists and turns along the way.
THE PRODUCTION is filled with wonderful performances from the ensemble cast assigned to perform a motley crew of characters.
Reagan Webster, as leading lady Janet, is certain to captivate and delight with her melodic voice, while Archie Huskey offers a sense of panache as her dashing young suitor.
Jessica Truitt, meanwhile, is uproarious as the drowsy chaperone herself, assigned to give guidance and advice to Janet as her wedding approaches. One problem: the chaperone has a taste for most things alcoholic and may not always dispense the most appropriate bits of wisdom.
Equally riotous is the brilliant Mack Melvin as the Latin lethario Andolpho, dead set on finding and wooing the bride-to-be, but mistakenly taking aim at her drowsy chaperone instead.
