With such excellent reviews, a plethora of 'offwestend' nominations and even the 'whingers' giving it praise, i had high hopes for the first revival of Drowsy. Alas, it's a shocker. Most of it is really dull and most of it is actually quite lazy. Seeing a rehash of the original production done not quite as well doesn't really constitute a new production. The main error here is 'The man in chair' role, performed by an actor with a lack of 'being able to act'. call me a stick-in-the mud, or 'twat', but i'd LOVE to see some acting in a musical once in a while, especially in a role that doesn't really require the actor to sing, so you should really forgive me for expecting someone whose role is to narrate the entire show, to be able to, you know, act. It may seem a little unfair to pick just on this performance given that 80% of the cast are worse actors than he, however they can sing and some of them actually really dance very well indeed, so they at least churn out 66.66% worth of my cash in 'show' form. But again, what is the point of dancers and singers if they cant tell a story physically or convince me of character. The only exception to this is the delightful actress who played 'Kitty' (who i still don't understand why she wasn't playing 'Janet') and to a certain extent the 'Drowsy Chaperone' herself, but, however, cleverly or unintentionally, seemed to be in a completely different show atogether! The production is ok. there are some nice touches in some of the songs, the aeroplane in act 2 is nicely done (I must say that the choreography is shocking and seemingly derived from naff youtube videos), however, the show has been reduced to pantomime rather than a loving comic homage to those 1920/30's musicals and the ultimately the tragic core of it is completely lost.
- Cassox
19 Oct 10
i saw the much ..criticaly savaged west end version ...which i loved ...and thought it was much better than a lot of other west end shows at the time ...this much smaller compact version ,although not perfect ...or as sumptuious.. as west end ... was fab we had a great night ..catch it while you can i hope to go again ...really great cast very hard working ahley day is a dream boat .... some great comedy moments ...adolpho ,and pastry chefs , kitty a scream ...everyone is great and chaperone ...well .... i am a huge miss paige fan ...but ....this is what chaperone should have been siobhan was fantastic well done - rob g
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