Theater

Tony Award-winning play a show tunes bonanza

Chloe Tibbett and Ryan Whitfield star in The Drowsy Chaperone at The Weekend Theater.
Chloe Tibbett and Ryan Whitfield star in The Drowsy Chaperone at The Weekend Theater.

We all have that one friend.

You're riding in the car, enjoying the scenery, when he pushes play on iTunes or pops in a CD. Instead of Bob Dylan, Beyonce or Tim McGraw, out of the speakers blares ... show tunes?

The Drowsy Chaperone: A Musical Within a Comedy

Friday through July 31, The Weekend Theater, West Seventh and Chester streets, Little Rock Show times: 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2:30 p.m. Sunday

Tickets: $20 adults, $16 for students and senior citizens; $2 discount Thursday performance

(501) 374-3761

weekendtheater.tix.…

Your friend is transported to a world where people address each other in song, sweeping their arms and then pulling them into clenched fists for special emphasis.

If you've ever wanted to understand this behavior, or even better, if it sounds like you, consider the show opening this weekend at The Weekend Theater.

Winner of five Tony Awards in 2006, The Drowsy Chaperone: A Musical Within a Comedy tells the story of a man whose agoraphobia (fear of public places) renders him terrified to leave his squalid New York apartment. Loud noises surprise; when something drops on the floor, he must clean it right away.

"Everything just kind of rattles him," says actor Ryan Whitfield, one of the leads in the production. "He needs a Xanax."

Depressed by his isolation and neurosis, he seeks comfort in his greatest passion: high camp Broadway musicals from a bygone era. When he sets the needle on an old LP of a fictional 1928 musical comedy, The Drowsy Chaperone, the apartment is transformed by a swirl of seashell footlights, flashy furniture and multi-colored backdrops into a glitzy set. One by one the actors appear; the audience is now following along as this Broadway fanatic becomes lost in his fantasy.

"The idea is sometimes you need to listen and get lost in it," Whitfield says. "The escape of how art can transport you from everyday life."

Chaperone is an over-the-top homage to the elaborate vaudeville revues of the early 20th century, when stars such as Josephine Baker fronted a menagerie of chorus girls, brassy music and slapstick sketches. Its plot revolves around a Baker-esque starlet named Janet Van de Graaff (Chloe Tibbet) who is torn about giving up her life on the stage to marry Robert Martin (Whitfield). The Drowsy Chaperone (Cheryl Troillett) the maid of honor, has a weakness for alcohol and melodrama, which hinders her ability to keep trouble from finding the bride.

The production is a comedy in the Shakespearean sense of the word; a winding narrative with almost a half-dozen subplots that somehow all end in marriage, Las Vegas-style. Similar to a Warner Bros. cartoon, an Amelia Earhart-style character whisks them all away by air for a honeymoon in the tropics.

"It's quite ridiculous, the entire show," Whitfield says. "It's extreme camp."

The protagonist, referred to as "Man in Chair" and played by Michael Henderson, narrates the unfolding action in his apartment. The musical is a communal experience.

"If you're sitting in the front, he'll point and say, 'Hey you, what do you think?'" Whitfield says. "He's very much proactive in engaging the audience."

Maybe after watching this, the next time your friend turns on show tunes in the car, you'll be able to understand.

Weekend on 07/14/2016

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