The show after the show

It's around midnight on a recent Friday, and we've already heard "Dare to Be Stupid" from the soundman for the Footlight Club's "A Carol Christmas , " and "How to Save a Life" from the actor who played the Earl of Oxford in the Publick Theatre's recent "Beard of Avon." As Kate's understudy from this summer's "Taming of the Shrew" takes the stage, the cheesily futuristic wash of "Mr. Roboto" flows through the speakers. Her singing is spirited. She does the robot.

This is karaoke at the Playhouse Lounge, where the people who entertain Boston come to entertain each other. Sandwiched between the basement theater of "Shear Madness" and Blue Man Group on the second floor, the Warrenton Street bar has become an unofficial Friday-night hangout for Boston's theater community.

Jeremy Johnson , the member services manager for local theater organization StageSource and a cast member of "Shear Madness," refers to it as "Boston's cast party," and it attracts performers both local and touring. Richard Dreyfuss has sung here. So has Elizabeth Berkley. Valerie Harper and Quentin Tarantino have come just for the ambience, and Matthew Broderick was kicked out for arguing with the manager during a blackout evacuation.

It's not exclusively theater people getting up onstage. Elizabeth Bean works for a health care company. Brian Racki is a Stop & Shop delivery clerk. Denny Ciampa is a letter carrier. All are regulars. "There are some great singers in here, which can be a little bit intimidating," says Christopher Moreau, the Footlight soundman, who will perform several Weird Al Yankovic songs over the course of the evening. "But I don't think that this room is off-putting to people who maybe can't sing or don't have any stage experience. These people, they're real fun, accommodating people."

Still, the clientele comes predominantly from the theater community, aided no doubt by the Lounge's location in the same building as two of Boston's longest-running shows. The space itself has a long performance history, having been home to the Comedy Connection through the late 1980s. (The walls of the erstwhile green room, now a supply closet, still bear ballpoint graffiti by comics such as Anthony Clark and Steven Wright .)

But earlier attempts at bringing karaoke to the Lounge had failed. The current version might have met with the same fate if not for a deliberate effort to target Boston's performers. Lounge bartender Billy Swift and others credit Johnson with spreading the word when the event started four years ago.

"I made sure that every single person I knew was here for the first night, and we were packed," says Johnson. "Whenever I was doing a show -- whenever I was directing something or acting, every Friday night, rehearsal, whatever -- I said, 'I'm going to karaoke. You should come with me.' " With the Lounge's connection to other theaters around town -- general manager Jason Reed also runs concessions for the Colonial Theatre and the Opera House -- word spread quickly.

"For better or for worse," says Johnson, "I dragged everybody in Boston to this bar on Friday nights because I like karaoke."

Lisa Tucker from Stoneham Theatre's "A Christmas Story" has just finished singing the Beatles' "Come Together" with Robin Smith, who next appears in the Charlestown Working Theater's upcoming "Race." "It depends on how tired you are," says Tucker. "When you're in tech [rehearsal] for a show, all you want to do is go home and go to sleep. But when you do a show, it's 10 and you're all wound up and you're like, 'Let's go do karaoke!' "

Networking opportunities are plentiful, and theater gigs have been nabbed at the Lounge. But it's more about cutting loose than schmoozing. "With all the people being actors here," says Swift, "everyone feels welcome, whether they're a stranger walking by on the street, foot traffic, or if it's a star in a play down the street that comes in."

Stars like Dreyfuss, whose "Sly Fox" played a pre-Broadway tryout at the Shubert in early 2004. DJ Jimmy, who runs the karaoke, says that the actor came in one night with costars Berkley, Eric Stoltz , and Irwin Corey . Dreyfuss selected Lloyd Price's "Stagger Lee" but ended up waiting an hour and a half to sing because he had put a fake name on his slip: Al Pacino.

"He'd never done karaoke, so he got up and he had a blast," says Jimmy. "And [afterward] he came up and said, 'Oh, I heard that you guys do a good OutKast . Could you get up there and do that?' So we went up there and did [ 'Hey Ya!'], and he was out dancing in the aisles with total strangers, having a grand time. I think he met his wife that weekend. I don't know if it was actually here," he adds with a laugh.

The DJ diplomatically neglects to say whether Dreyfuss was any good, though he does believe that the quality of singing at the Lounge is better than most. But whether the singers are Academy Award winners, local performers, or civilians with no connection to the theater, the response is the same.

"They're a good crowd, which is important," says Moreau. "They'll pay attention. They always clap at the end. It's not just a lot of people hanging out and the karaoke is kind of an annoyance. The people who are here right now are here for the karaoke."

"You come down here, and if you're not even that good of a singer, you're going to get a whoop and a cheer," agrees DJ Jimmy. "I work all over Eastern Massachusetts. This is what I do for a living. And this is my favorite show."