THE DROWSY CHAPERONE
Novello Theatre, London WC2
Opened 6 June, 2007
***
Pick any two stools and watch this show fall between them. In its
driving spirit, it is a fringe studio offering (originally created by a
Toronto comedy company): a musical-theatre fan in his apartment plays
us the soundtrack album of a forgotten 1928 show, commenting drily on
it and its performers along the way. Yet in its current form it also
requires large-scale production values to do justice to the
show-within-a-show, which is played out before us.
It is a pastiche of the antiquated kind of musical confection that
simply slotted songs into a gossamer-thin plot structure (Broadway
starlet about to marry handsome young devil; temporary hiccup; all
resolved, plus three additional bridal couples); however, its
21st-century milieu takes its toll. The word "knowing" does not begin
to cover the material: there are major deities less aware than this
book. It simultaneously indulges in all the period hallmarks, and also
deprecates them by presenting them as quaint or camp. Nor can it resist
having its cake and eating it with an ending that is at once
Twenties-bright and modern-day sentimental-affirmative.
Director Casey Nicholaw's cast make sterling efforts, but not even the
revered Elaine Paige in the title role can entirely banish the
inauthentic modern music-theatre nose-voice from songs which should be
delivered in quite another style. Our narrator's favourite plot point,
a line partially obscured on the "recording" by extraneous noise, is
repeatedly mistimed by Paige. Anachronisms such as "I'm still
conflicted" pop up in the script, and the narrator tries to portray the
casting of a black woman as an aviatrix ("what we now call a lesbian")
as progressive for 1928, when we know that the role exists because such
consciousness is mandatory for 2007.
All this, and I haven't mentioned whether it's actually any fun. Of
course it is (even though it overruns by a quarter-hour), but it queers
its own pitch by trying to play the "that's all that matters" card
whilst so consistently rooting itself in a far more complex culture.
Unlike the narrator, we can't escape our own world and yet remain in it
at the same time.
Written for the Financial
Times.
Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights
reserved.
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