Theatre UCF’s fall musical “The Drowsy Chaperone” opened Thursday and has continued to enthrall audiences throughout the weekend. The show will continue to run until November 2, and is definitely a show that you do not want to miss.
The musical comedy “The Drowsy Chaperone” begins with the man-in-the-chair, played by Alex Bair, as he invites the audience to join him in listening to his favorite musical. The musical shows a show within a show concept as the audience bounces back and forth between the “old man” in his home into the 1928 supposed wedding of Robert Martin and Janet Van De Graaff. The man-in-the-chair explains to the audience throughout the musical why he is such a fan of the show, adding little bits of commentary during the parts of the recording of the show which he doesn’t like. He brings the audience back-and-forth from the “real world” where he explains the background stories of the characters and the actors playing the characters into the “fantasy world” of the musical.
Though the narrator and “the show” don’t interact with each other for most of the musical, the comedic points throughout the musical were very well timed and well performed. The parts of the musical when “the power went out” or when “the record was suck” was all brilliantly choreographed and placed all together by the whole cast.
The comedic solo songs of the Chaperone (Sandia Ahlers), Robert (Tyler Beaureguard), Adolpho (Fredy Ruiz Jr), and Janet (Caitlin Doak) had the full-house audience laughing at every second of each song. Each actor and actress made their characters completely their own. All of the actors added their own comedic styling to their character, and successfully never broke character when the audience laughed. The more ridiculous some of the scenes got, the more the actors got into their character and their acting still prevailed.
At one time, there were dancing monkeys on stage, an airplane, and a blindfolded man roller-skating on the stage. So much was going on and all of that made the audience believe that something could go wrong, but the characters and the actors prevailed.
Also, throughout the musical there were some extra surprises that were nods to past musicals. “Sideshow”, Theatre UCF’s musical last fall, was mentioned when talking about the timing of a musical. Also, the characters Hucklebee and Bellomy, who were the parents in The Fantasticks, also made a random appearance that was very well appreciated by the audience’s response.
All in all, “The Drowsy Chaperone” was a wonderful show that helped explain why many of us go to the theatre in the first place–to escape the real world for a while and to have a fun.
The next show by Theatre UCF is “Shipwrecked! An Entertainment–The Amazing Adventure of Louis de Rougemont (As Told by Himself)” and will run from November 14 until November 24.
