TV sitcom star fell for 'Chaperone'

Original Broadway cast member Georgia Engel is reprising her role in "The Drowsy Chaperone" at the Opera House. (Joan Marcus)

As Georgia Engel read through the script for a new musical called "The Drowsy Chaperone" in the fall of 2004, she was thoroughly unimpressed. Engel, the helium-voiced actress best known for her portrayal of wide-eyed, miniskirt-wearing Georgette Franklin Baxter on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," agreed to perform in a reading of the show at a New York festival simply as a favor to her agent.

"To be absolutely honest with you, I had no interest whatsoever," she says by phone, in a speaking voice that still calls to mind an excited 8-year-old at the zoo. "In rehearsal it didn't seem all that great. But there was this one number that I sang called 'I Remember Love.' That number was delicious for me to sing, and that's what kept me in the show."

Unfortunately for Engel, 'I Remember Love' was cut from "The Drowsy Chaperone" before it reached Broadway (the song can be heard on the soundtrack), but it kept her in the show long enough for her to realize that the musical had the potential to be a hit. Two years after that 2004 reading, "Chaperone" took home five Tony Awards. The show's North American tour comes to the Opera House on Tuesday with Engel reprising her role in the original Broadway cast as Mrs. Tottendale.

Long before the arrival of the sitcom star, "The Drowsy Chaperone" was more of a goof than a musical tailored for Broadway. The show, which began as a pastiche of 1920s musical theater, was actually written as a wedding present for a bachelor party in Toronto by a group of friends who regularly collaborated on music and comedy shows.

"I was organizing the bachelor party," says Lisa Lambert, who won a Tony for the music and lyrics she composed with Greg Morrison. "The whole thing was just ridiculous."

In tribute to the impending marriage, "The Drowsy Chaperone" is the story of a wedding set in 1928, gathering together bigger-than-Ethel Merman musical-theater stereotypes such as the Latin lover, ham-fisted gangsters, the diva who sings a rousing anthem, and the obligatory showgirl.

The bridegroom who received the gift of musical theater instead of a lap dance thought the show had great potential to be a part of Toronto's lively fringe theater scene. After his marriage, Bob Martin worked with Lambert, Morrison, and writer Don McKellar to craft the 35-minute "Chaperone" into a real musical.

All involved felt that the show needed to be more than a parody of a 1920s stage show, which led to the birth of a character simply called Man in Chair. This fey, cardigan-loving social misfit sits in his living room listening to a dusty cast recording of the fictitious 1928 musical "The Drowsy Chaperone," commenting on its quirks with a combination of affection and sarcasm. All the while, the musical comes to life in his living room.

"Once we created the narrative framework of Man in Chair, which wasn't in the stag-party version, we were able to make a more cohesive show about the current state of musical theater rather than just a pastiche of a 1920s musical," says Martin, who played the role of Man in Chair on Broadway. "What we were really trying to do with the show was draw a comparison with the musicals of the 1920s to the overblown state of theater of the late 1990s, when the show was written."

The show went through several incarnations as it made the rounds in Toronto, but when it arrived in New York in 2004, its move to Broadway was swift, and Engel happily moved along with it, fully embracing her character of Mrs. Tottendale, the absent-minded hostess of the wedding.

For Engel, Mrs. Tottendale is the latest in a string of guileless characters. In this case, Mrs. Tottendale can't even remember why she's wearing an elaborate frock at the opening of the show. But Engel is not worried about typecasting.

"I get interviewers who say 'How does it feel to always play a ditzy character?' I don't have time for that." she says. "Yes, there's a specialized niche of certain comedic characters I play, but they're all different."

Engel's involvement in the show represents an unlikely career renaissance for the actress, who turns 60 in July. Prior to "Chaperone," Engel had received three Emmy Award nominations in a row in the category of Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her part on "Everybody Loves Raymond."

"I think part of it has to do with prayer," she says of the renaissance. "And part of it had to do with ["Everybody Loves Raymond" executive producer] Phil Rosenthal. When we worked together on 'Coach' he said to me, 'Georgia, we will work together again.' And when the time was right, he brought me in on 'Raymond.' I think being on that show made them interested in bringing me in to 'The Drowsy Chaperone.' "

But she says that she has always been unusually lucky when it comes to finding work in entertainment. Her earliest jobs were on the Broadway stage. When she started playing Georgette during the third season of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," she had been teaching Sunday school and collecting unemployment.

"My instincts and intuition are pretty good," she says. "I remember my first experience on 'Mary Tyler Moore' could have been daunting. I was in the cafeteria and I didn't know who to sit with. Valerie Harper called me over and insisted that I sit with her. I was treated with such love. It was a remarkable group of people, and for some reason, I have no idea why, they thought I could contribute something to their little orchestra."

Christopher Muther can be reached at muther@globe.com.