DROWSY question for those who saw it in CA...

Not terribly urgent, but I was just pondering...

When DROWSY was in it's earlier stages, was it always written that the show played at the Morosco theatre, or was that written in once they learned they would be playing the Marquis, which is where the Morosco once stood?

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The Morosco was a theater that was knocked down to build the Marriott Marquis Hotel, which opened the Marquis Theater which is where DROWSY plays. Which is why that joke is in there. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

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Updated On: 9/16/06 at 07:58 PM

The Morosco is the theater where all the plays you have accumulated random playbills for with vaguely familiar titles which you've never taken the time to look at originated. I must have 30 playbills from that theater but I never set foot in it.

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Munk understands the joke, guys. He's just wondering if it was a bizarre coincidence, or if it was specifically rewritten for that show.

To be honest, Munk, I can't remember. I didn't know that bit of trivia until it actually moved to New York, so that joke would have gone over my head had it been in the L.A. show. I'll ask my parents, though, who saw it, too -- they'd probably remember.

Actually, come to think of it, for some reason I can remember my dad saying something right after a joke about the Morosco... but that could just be something I'm hoping I remember, rather than actually do. Sorry. Hah.

It was written specifically for the Broadway version when it was decided Drowsy would play the Marquis. It might be the only time that a show bitches about the theatre it's appearing in!

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Thanks for all the info, guys!

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And in the Drowsy program, there's a photo of the Morosco Theatre and Drowsy marquee (photoshopped, of course). It's pretty funny.

The Winter Garden was where the show premiered in Canada. In LA, it was at the Pantages Theatre.

changin

It was at the Ahmanson out here in LA..the Winter Garden reference is about a line of dialogue in the show. The "actual" Drowsy Chaperone "played" the Winter Garden but the line was changed after the transfer to NYC.

For anyone who is interested, I recently unearthed an old Playbill collection (not my own) and while organizing it I stumbled upon a show that played at the Morosco ("A Life", in 1980). I scanned the "At This Theatre" page, picture of the facade and all, for anyone who cares to take a look.

Sadly, no mention of "The Drowsy Chaperone" ever playing.
Morosco "At This Theatre"

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Updated On: 9/22/06 at 07:41 PM

Matthewbrock, the Wintergarden theatrwe in Toronto is amazing. It's a 900 seat theatre built ON TOP of a 1,400 seat theatre. They used to called them "double-stacked" theatres. It was designed by Thomas Lamb in 1911 and built in 1912. The huge trusses which support the secont theatre were raised with teams of 100 horses (can you imagine the poop on Yonge Street after that?) A friend of mine discovered this theatre was still up there (by the 1980's the downstairs theatre had been a movie house for 50 years. We took flashlights and climbed up the huge Phantom-Of_the-Operaesque stairs, 99 steps to the upper theatre and found that the Winter Garden had been closed and sealed off in 1929. It was too high up to get patrons to travel for a movie. That weekenwe ran cables up to the teatre and had a party with live projection of a movie on the 70-year-old screen for the first time since '29.

The theatre has been renovated and refirbished but is, I understand, pretty much of a huge white elephant as the fantastical winter garden setting with 100,000 dried silk leaves just overpowers any show that plays there.

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