“I get to talk with the audience, which is very fun, but I don’t interact with the other characters, which is interesting. They all gotta kinda stop when I stop it,” she said. Stauffer said the role provides her an opportunity to move all over the stage while interacting with the audience. The role is traditionally played by a man “but they cast me,” she said, noting she would stay true to the script. A role that I love, love, love and I’m so honored to be playing,” Stauffer said. “He pauses to tell you about the show, tell you about all sorts of nonsense - random fun facts, his life, his ex-wife, his mother - whatever nonsense he wants to talk about,” said Stauffer, who was Penny in “You Can’t Take it with You” and Jordan Baker in “The Great Gatsby” during last summer’s Broadway on the Beach production but had never before been one of the leads. Telephone calls continually interrupt the Man in the Chair’s enjoyment, giving Stauffer a chance to address the audience. “The narrator pauses during the show, stops the record, explains about this actor or that actor - little fourth-wall breaks that are happening - as she narrates about the fictitious stars in the show,” LeMaire said. Other characters are the bumbling best man, not-so-bright hostess, gangsters posing as pastry chefs and a misguided Latin lover. It’s the tale of two lovers on the eve of their wedding and the lengths the bride’s employer will go to in his attempt to stop the ceremony for his own selfish purposes. The dance numbers are fantastic and the music gets in your head.”Īs the Man in the Chair, Stauffer is like the ring master of the “show within the show” that unfolds inside the apartment. LeMaire noted it is not a well-known title and that the performers even poo-pooed it until they got into the piece.
Drowsy chaperone characters full#
“For this show we wanted a big musical with a full pit and a lot of dance numbers, big sound,” he said. The disruptions of the past two years factored into the production he chose, LeMaire said. “With most of the cast inoculated or wearing masks when more comfortable we’ve really been able to grow the show and it’s come together remarkably well.” The restrictions - masks, distancing - was the right thing to do but caused a lot of stress,” he said. “It will be a lot less stress for everybody.
LeMaire said the entire process has been much easier with all of the pandemic restrictions lifted.
“Last year we were able to get only 150 people in the audience this year we will be able to pack the house,” he said. LeMaire said the students are excited to get back to a normal production after the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted those over the past two years in a variety of ways. The production stars Taylor Stauffer as the narrator (known as the Man in the Chair), Natalie Argento and Estelle Gimbel as Janet Van de Graaff, Charlie Costal as Robert and a cast of more than 40 students on stage with another 30+ behind the scenes in the stage crew, tech crew and pit. “He puts on an album and the musical comes alive,” LeMaire said. OCEAN CITY - Travel back to the Roaring ’20s as the Ocean City High School Drama Guild presents “The Drowsy Chaperone,” a five-time Tony Award-winning musical set in 1928 amid the Jazz Age.ĭirector Rob LeMaire called the production a comedic look at the musicals of the early 1920s “done through the imagination of a person in his apartment.”
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