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

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 9/16/06 at 7:50pm

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?

[bwayondabrain]

Posted: 9/16/06 at 7:56pm

i didnt know the Morosco was a real theatre! :) cool

sorry for the threadjack...

[Wanna Be A Foster]

Posted: 9/16/06 at 7:58pm

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.

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

[commasplice]

Posted: 9/16/06 at 8:21pm

The Morosco joke was written for Broadway. Before that, THE DROWSY CHAPERONE played at the Winter Garden theatre.

[allofmylife]

Posted: 9/16/06 at 11:02pm

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.

[timote316]

Posted: 9/17/06 at 12:07am

I figured that they changed the joke, because that'd be an awful funny coincidence.

Perfect gag, though.

[thevolleyballer]

Posted: 9/17/06 at 1:45am

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.

[frontrowcentre2]

Posted: 9/17/06 at 2:38am

I was there the day they tore it down. A sad day for the theatre community. A number of actors including Christopher Reeve, and Tammy Grimes had been appearing on a makeshift stage asking people to support their petition to save the theatres. All week long they performed songs and monologues from plays and musicals that had plated the Morosco and Globe/Helen Hayes. In a final desperate act of civil disobedience, they all marched over and stood in the way of the bulldozers. The police came and arrested them and took them away. The bulldozers quickly made rubble of the two theatres. Oh, the first thing the workers did? Smash a series of frosted white glass panels each reading Morosco that hung along the theatre’s marquee.

You can catch a brief glimpse of the Morosco (and other theatres along the street, circa 1955) in the very opening shot of the movie ANYTHING GOES (Paramount, 1956) Just after the main titles is a brief shot of the street. The Morosco marquee is on the lower right side of the screen announcing CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF (not all the words are visible.) Watch for it.

[leefowler]

Posted: 9/17/06 at 8:42am

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!

[Smaxie]

Posted: 9/17/06 at 9:15am

>It might be the only time that a show bitches about the theatre it's appearing in!<

Not true. In the original Merrily We Roll Along, Frank and Charlie's Broadway hit, "Musical Husbands," is playing at the Alvin Theatre, the same theatre where Merrily was playing. On opening night, Charlie's wife is pregnant, and Charlie is rushing off to the hospital. Mary has a joke along the lines that it's a good thing Charlie's wife didn't give birth at the theatre, otherwise they might have been tempted to name the baby Alvin. (The joke might remain in the revised version, but I can't recall).

Also, in Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, Lena had some set patter about what a dump the Nederlander Theatre was/is. I vaguely recall that she actually wouldn't allow the air conditioning at the theatre to be used, for her voice, but blamed it on the theatre in her act.

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 9/17/06 at 1:20pm

Thanks for all the info, guys!

[Unknown User]

Posted: 9/17/06 at 1:37pm

For sure it was the Winter Garden.

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 9/17/06 at 1:46pm

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

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 9/17/06 at 1:47pm

Yeah, it's on the inside of the CD as well. Very funny.

[changinandhow]

Posted: 9/17/06 at 6:35pm

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

[mathewbrock]

Posted: 9/18/06 at 12:17am

Is there a Winter Garden theatre in Canada? I had no idea.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 9/18/06 at 12:23am

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.

[SuttonFan]

Posted: 9/18/06 at 12:44am

Yeah I remember the line in L.A. and they said it was playing at the Winter Garden.

[SDav 10495]

Posted: 9/22/06 at 7:41pm

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"

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

[DezBryner]

Posted: 9/22/06 at 9:58pm

Thanks for posting the interesting reading.
I always love that page of the Playbill.

[allofmylife]

Posted: 1/3/07 at 10:39pm

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.