Twenty years ago, The Drowsy Chaperone won five Tony Awards, including Best Book, Best Original Score, and awards for Costume Design, Scenic Design, and Featured Actress. Many reviewers embraced it as a loving, clever send-up of what Musical Theater International calls “Golden Age musicals.”


The Tony Awards performance of Janet Van De Graaff’s comic solo song “Show Off” captured that tone perfectly. The number generates its humor through contradiction: a character insists she will “no longer show off” while delivering an escalating parade of masterful, highly theatrical performance tropes drawn from musical theatre of the 1920s through the 1940s. The audience is invited to laugh at the excess even as the production revels in it.

But musical theatre is not politically innocent, and this loving send up also provokes important questions about representation and history. CLICK HERE to access website that explores both the complex cultural history of the work and the exciting collaborative creative process of bringing this to life.