Show features an ensemble cast of 20 local performers

Photo courtesy Tim Ahlin
From left to right: Jason Eves (Adolpho), Peter Mandel (Man in Chair), Ken Christopher (Robert Martin), Riley Brown (Kitty), Nicole King-Yarbrough (Janet Van de Graff), and Ingrid Rottman (The Drowsy Chaperone).

By Calvin Nuttall

It seems like an unusual premise for a hit Broadway musical: All alone in an apartment, a man sits in a comfortable armchair, remaining seated throughout the show. He does not interact with any other characters who appear on stage. He speaks only to the audience as an old-fashioned screwball story unfolds around him.

This is the setup for South Valley Civic Theatre’s “The Drowsy Chaperone,” opening Feb 24. The show features an ensemble cast of 20 actors performing Vaudeville-style dance numbers and doing “madcap hi-jinks.”

The play is a loving send-up of the Jazz Age musical, telling the romantic comedy story of a fictitious 1928 musical. It mixes the antics of two lovers on the eve of their wedding, a bumbling best man, a desperate theater producer, a not-so-bright hostess, two gangsters posing as pastry chefs, a misguided Don Juan and an intoxicated chaperone for an evening of madcap delight, according to SVCT’s website.

Peter Mandel plays the central role of the unnamed narrator.

“All of this pizazz is actually in the mind of the man in the chair,” he said. “So, all of this is somewhat imaginary. The man in the chair is the only ‘real’ person in the show, who talks to the audience, explaining the story. As he speaks, the show is being performed.”

The man in the chair is a lonely gentleman who turns to his parents’ old records for a pick-me-up when he is feeling blue. Of those, his favorite is a cast recording of  “The Drowsy Chaperone.” Mandel plays the record and narrates the story for the audience.

The narrator consistently breaks the fourth wall and engages the audience, he said. As the musical is set in a bygone era, not everything will translate easily for a modern audience. The narrator’s job is to help the audience understand what was and was not appropriate for the time, so they can better appreciate the drama.

“He loves this show,” Mandel said of the man in the chair. “He explains the backgrounds of the actors and everything he has learned about this show over the years because he has researched it. He’ll talk about the biographies of the performers onstage, the plot, the background, and things like that.” The role of the narrator is uniquely challenging because, due to the premise of the show, he does not speak directly with any of the other characters, Mandel said.

“There’s nobody else on stage with me. The rest of them don’t really exist,” he said. “They’re all in my imagination. When you’re learning lines, having dialogue makes it simpler because you’re responding to someone, which makes it easier to remember what the next line would be. There’s no dialogue, it’s dozens of monologues instead. It’s fun to perform, though.”

Even though the show is set in the 1920s, through magic of stagecraft the story all happens in the narrator’s  apartment, said Ken Christopher, who plays “Robert Martin,” a lead character of the musical within the musical.

“It’s rip-roaring fun,” he said.

Christopher, who played the role of “Beast” in SVCT’s recent production of “Beauty and the Beast,” is again joined by Nicole King-Yarbrough (who played “Beauty) as the leading lady, this time in the role of “Janet Van de Graff.”

“Janet is a total diva,” King-Yarbrough said. “She loves the spotlight, but she is ready to risk it all and give it all away to marry a man she just met. Her manager, ‘Feldzieg,’ is dying to keep her on the stage. She really wants to know if Robert is the man for her. So she goes to extremes to figure out if he is.”

“The Drowsy Chaperone” is a fun, rollicking ride, Christopher said.

“It has corny humor and a certain levity to it I think a lot of us could use now,” he said. “It’s a show you’re going to enjoy. It’s not overly complicated. It’s just a really fun time.”

Calvin Nuttall is a freelance writer and a resident of Morgan Hill.