While I’ve watched my bro on stage both in real life and on streaming productions he’s sent me links to, TYG has never watched him. That was why last week’s date movie was Craig’s DVD of THE DROWSY CHAPERONE, which I rewatched last year.
The play has a middle-aged narrator retreating from the world by putting on one of his favorite LPs (as vinyl’s making a comeback, this no longer reads Old and Out of Touch the way I think it was meant to), a frothy 1920s show, The Drowsy Chaperone and making metacommentary as we watch the show. The story is absurd, involving a big wedding where multiple guests have clashing agendas and the bride is haunted by some second thoughts — will the wedding come off? Will flamboyant Euro-trash casanova Aldolfo seduce the bride? Will the groom fall for the incredibly beautiful French girl Mimi? Will it end happily — but y’all probably know the answer to that one.
TYG isn’t into musicals the way I am but she enjoyed the absurdity and my brother’s performance as a sad guy finding comfort in entertainment that he loves even though it isn’t that good (I can relate). She was thrown by a joke about the nameless narrator researching one ukelele-playing actor in the musical (“All my online research led me to photographs of Tiny Tim’s autopsy.”) as she’d never heard of the ukelele-playing Tiny Tim (well known when I was a tween). “You’ve been reading your own mind, you idiot!”
