The Drowsy Chaperone

The Drowsy Chaperone is a musical with book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar and music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison. It is a parody of American musical comedy of the 1920s. The story concerns a middle-aged, asocial musical theatre fan; as he plays the record of his favorite musical, the (fictional) 1928 hit The Drowsy Chaperone, the show comes to life onstage as he wryly comments on the music, story, and actors. The Drowsy Chaperone debuted in 1998 at The Rivoli in Toronto and opened on Broadway on 1 May 2006. The show was nominated for multiple Broadway (2006) and London (2008) theatre awards, winning five Tony Awards and seven Drama Desk Awards. The show has had major productions in Toronto, Los Angeles, New York, London, and Japan, as well as two North American tours.

History

The Drowsy Chaperone started in 1997, when McKellar, Lambert, Morrison and several friends created a spoof of old musicals for the stag party of Bob Martin and Janet van de Graaf. In its first incarnation, there was no Man in Chair, the musical styles ranged from the 1920s to the 1940s, and the jokes were more risqué. When the show was reshaped for the Toronto Fringe Festival, Martin became a co-writer, creating Man in Chair to serve as a narrator/commentator for the piece.

Bob Martin

Bob Martin may refer to:

People

Other

Lisa Lambert

Lisa Lambert (born December 1962 in Washington D.C.) is an actress, comedy writer, and Tony Award winning composer, best known for writing the lyrics and music to The Drowsy Chaperone.

Career

Lambert played in the movies Childstar and Slings and Arrows. Her works for television include Getting Along Famously and Skippy's Rangers- The Show They Never Gave.

Lambert also took part in stage productions, including Mirth, People Park, The Irish Musical, The Drowsy Chaperone, The Bargain Musical, All Hams on Deck, Ouch My Toe, An American in Harris, An Awkward Evening with Martin and Johnson.

Awards

Lambert won the Tony Award for Best Original Score, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics for The Drowsy Chaperone.

References

External links

Greg Morrison

Greg Morrison (born 1965) is a Tony Award–winning and Drama Desk Award–winning Canadian writer and composer best known for his work on the music and lyrics of The Drowsy Chaperone, which he wrote with Lisa Lambert. He also has extensive credits for directing and musical directing shows across the United States and Canada. He is a recipient of a Canadian Comedy Award and a Sterling Award for Original Composition.

Morrison's affiliation with The Drowsy Chaperone started in 1999 when Don McKellar and Lisa Lambert created a spoof of old musicals for the stag party before the wedding of their theatre friends Bob Martin and Janet Van De Graaff.

Theater credits

Composer and lyricist

Cast recording

A cast recording is a recording of a stage musical that is intended to document the songs as they were performed in the show and experienced by the audience. An original cast recording or OCR, as the name implies, features the voices of the show's original cast. A cast recording featuring the first cast to perform a musical in a particular venue is known, for example, as an "original Broadway cast recording" or an "original London cast recording".

Cast recordings are (usually) studio recordings rather than live recordings. The recorded song lyrics and orchestrations are nonetheless identical (or very similar to) those of the songs as performed in the theatre. Like any studio performance, the recording is of course an idealized rendering, more glossily perfect than any live performance could be, and without audible audience reaction. Nevertheless, the listener who has attended the live show expects it to be an accurate souvenir of the experience.

History

The British were the first to make cast recordings, and they were also the first to make original London cast recordings of shows that had already opened on Broadway, but had not been recorded with their original Broadway cast. This led to the odd situation of having, for example, a 1928 recording of the London cast of Show Boat, but no recording with the actual 1927 Broadway cast, and a recording of the London cast of Sigmund Romberg's The Desert Song, but not of the 1926 Broadway cast - even though both of these shows are Broadway musicals, rather than British ones.