{"id":22381,"date":"2018-12-08T13:14:16","date_gmt":"2018-12-08T18:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=22381"},"modified":"2018-12-08T16:14:52","modified_gmt":"2018-12-08T21:14:52","slug":"man-in-chair-hits-close-to-home-for-drowsy-chaperone-director","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/man-in-chair-hits-close-to-home-for-drowsy-chaperone-director\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cMan in Chair\u201d hits close to home for Drowsy Chaperone director"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

When the curtain rises on the Drowsy Chaperone, the first thing you see is a man sitting in a simple chair. He lives in a relatively small apartment, alone, with his record albums to keep him company \u2013 specifically his albums of Broadway shows.
\nAs the play unfolds, his apartment becomes the backdrop of a musical as he plays music from The Drowsy Chaperone, a long-forgotten 1920s musical that holds a special place in his heart.
\nThe resulting production, which opened Thursday night at Theatre Aurora, is a joyous production that is sure to put a smile on anyone\u2019s face \u2013 and director Bob Riddell is no exception.
\n\u201cI AM the Man in Chair,\u201d says Mr. Riddell with a laugh, when asked why the opportunity to direct the show appealed to him. \u201cI have always collected show albums. If it said \u2018original cast\u2019 on it, I bought it even if I hadn\u2019t heard it because I thought it had to be good \u2013 they recorded it! Over the years, I have really gained perspective on musicals and the Man in Chair is a character that definitely leaps out at me.\u201d
\nMr. Riddell was excited my movie musicals from a very young age. If he ever came across a variety show on TV with singing, dancing and just \u201cpure entertainment with movement, costumes, colour,\u201d he had to sit and watch for the \u201cenergy and excitement.\u201d
\n\u201cI really love that expression of artistic endeavour that they are able to put on and it all comes together,\u201d he says. \u201cThe neat thing about it is it all looks so seamless. The ones you really enjoy, it looks like it took no effort and just happened naturally. I really appreciate all the things that go into it. On the other side, you know how much time and effort it takes just to make those magical moments look so seamless.
\n\u201cI was always the kid who was putting shows on in the neighbourhood and gathering up friends to put on something. For the longest time it was my little secret, if you can say that. It wasn\u2019t until I was in my early 20s and a friend from high school and I went to see a production in Ottawa [that I first thought about] going out for it. We dared each other, thinking we were really stepping off the high diving board into something unknown, but when we both got into the show, that we said, \u2018Okay!\u2019\u201d
\nIt was a bit of a learning curve as he grappled with new dance moves, but he had the passion and it came relatively quickly to him.
\n\u201cIt just takes over and it fuelled those flames that were underneath there on being involved in doing musicals,\u201d he says.
\nMusicals are what brought Bob Riddell to Theatre Aurora. His first show with the local company was Stephen Sondheim\u2019s \u201cGypsy\u201d in 1989, and he hasn\u2019t looked back. His first exposure to The Drowsy Chaperone, a musical penned and first produced in Canada before hitting it big on Broadway, happened here at home with the touring company and local productions.
\nHe instantly loved the show, describing it as a \u201cgem\u201d in that it simply had so much packed into it.
\nDirecting the show was always in the back of his mind and when he heard it was on the docket for Theatre Aurora\u2019s 60th anniversary season, he seized the chance.
\nOne of the previous productions he experienced placed the show on a very large stage, although the action, as it is written, takes place in the confined atmosphere of the Man in Chair\u2019s apartment. He wanted the challenge of staging it in a smaller space like Theatre Aurora.
\n\u201cI marvelled at how much they could cram into such a tiny space when I first saw it in South Simcoe and create all that magic,\u201d he recalls. \u201cThinking about Theatre Aurora and knowing it is a smaller, intimate space, I thought this would be a great challenge. The charm of the show is making all these things happen as quickly as possible and lead the audience to wonder how we did it.\u201d
\nFor such a comparatively small space, Mr. Riddell describes the characters in The Drowsy Chaperone as \u201clarger than life,\u201d inspired by the MGM Dream Factory musicals from the Golden Age of Hollywood \u2013 from the perky ingenue, to the matinee idol, to the Latin lover, to the grand dame leading lady.
\n\u201cThese changed the shape of musicals, and when the Beatles coming in, it was sort of the last heyday,\u201d he says. A lot of musicals bit the dust or almost broke the studios because that wasn\u2019t what the audience was looking for. These characters are painted in broad strokes and there\u2019s a charm in that. I think The Man in Chair definitely takes people on the ride with him. You can understand all his personal demons, his anxieties and what gets his juices going, so to speak. It is nice to have that escape and he definitely has that going through his show albums, especially The Drowsy Chaperone, his favourite musical.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Drowsy Chaperone runs at Theatre Aurora on select dates and times through December 8. For more information, including tickets, visit www.theatreaurora.com or call 905-727-3369.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir When the curtain rises on the Drowsy Chaperone, the first thing you see is a man sitting in a simple chair. He lives in a relatively small apartment, alone, with his record albums to keep him company \u2013 specifically his albums of Broadway shows. As the play unfolds, his apartment becomes the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/2018-12-06-06.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5OZ","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-01 15:01:29","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}