Arts & Entertainment

Show-Within-A-Show

Former Detroiter is the producer behind cast recording of
The Drowsy Chaperone's Tony Award-winning Best Score.

Suzanne Chessler

Special to the Jewish News

A

nyone leaving The Drowsy
Chaperone humming the musi-
cal-comedy score and ready to
buy the original cast recording will find
albums with a Detroit connection.
Joel Moss, who performed in the Detroit-
area Union Street 3 folk group with friends
from Congregation Beth Aaron's United
Synagogue Youth group, actually produced
two recorded versions of the show run-
ning through Dec. 26 at the Performance
Network Theatre in Ann Arbor.
The new revival, directed by Carla
Milarch, stars Naz Edwards, Scott
Crownover and Phil Powers.
"Our recording concept was rather unusual
because of the way the show is set up as a
play within a play,' says Moss, who maintains
a home studio in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
"We made a CD, which is the cast record-
ing, and a vinyl album, which is, in essence,
the pretend 1929 album the central charac-
ter is playing in his apartment.
"I'm also an audio engineer so I wear
many hats for cast recordings. I do the
editing and mixing besides producing."
The Drowsy Chaperone, with book by
Bob Martin and Don McKeller and music
and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg
Morrison, received 2006 Tony Awards for
Best Book of a Musical and Best Original
Score. It takes audiences back to the 1920s
with lots of fantasy and glitz.

The action spins from a man ("Man in
Chair") sitting in his apartment and listen-
ing to a cast recording. Magically, the show
comes to life.
The play within the play involves the
star of the fictitious Feldzeig's Follies. After
announcing she is leaving the show to marry
a rich oilman, the star is wooed by a produc-
er-hired gigolo to stop her departure.
"The Drowsy Chaperone started as an
engagement party skit for Bob Martin and
his fiancee in Canada and went through
several incarnations before becoming a
show that debuted in Los Angeles and went
to Broadway:' Moss recalls.
"Once it was in New York, a date was set for
the cast recording. The recording process is
a chaotic experience because it all has to be
completed in a day. It's done in a recording
studio since the theater would be too costly
Moss, who played banjo and clarinet
while a student at Mumford High School,
only attended classes three days a week.
Mondays and Fridays were travel time to
and from folk appearances.
After earning a master's degree in archi-
tecture at the University of Minnesota,
where he kept up with some music inter-
ests, Moss moved to Los Angeles and
found technical work with many recording
stars, including Michael Jackson, the Beach
Boys and Patti Austin.
Film music became his next venture, and
he was executive director and chief engineer
of the Record Plant Recording Studios on the
Paramount Pictures lot before moving on to

work with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.
With the founding of Managra Music
Inc., a multifaceted music production
entity, Moss, 66, has continued to pur-
Joel Moss on The Drowsy Chaperone:
sue a wide variety of musical projects.
"The music is so much fun."
"In 2000, I met Kurt Deutsch and
Sherie Rene Scott, who started Sh-K-
Ann Arbor, share Moss' feelings about
Boom Records:' says Moss, who regu-
thoroughly enjoying work on the musical
larly gets back to Michigan to see family,
comedy.
including his mother, Dorothy Moss of
Hammen, 57, plays Mrs. Tottendale, a
Southfield. "The subsidiary for Broadway
pleasantly dotty character appearing in the
musicals is called Ghostlight
play. The full-time lawyer and hob-
Records, and The Drowsy
byist actress will be joined on stage
Chaperone is on that."
by her husband, Mark Hammen,
Recent Broadway cast record-
who portrays Jewish character
ings include Legally Blonde and
Victor Feldzieg.
Next to Normal. "I hardly ever
"Campy" is the way Rosenwald
listen to most shows after the
describes the musical comedy in
recordings are made,' Moss says.
which she plays Kitty, a flaky chorus
"Once I've spent so much time
Linda Rabin
girl who wants to be the star but
with them, I rarely put them in
Hammell
never can realize her dream.
my car or the stereo at home.
"This show is incredibly funny
"Yet, I do find myself pulling out
with over-the-top characters and
The Drowsy Chaperone. The music
jokes especially for theater lovers:'
is so much fun, and the cast mem-
says Rosenwald, 41, an actress for
bers were all good friends. We just
the University of Michigan Center
had the best time working on it."
for Research on Learning and
Two local cast members, Linda
Teaching, which uses drama to
Rabin Hammell of Lathrup
enhance instruction. "It's laughing
Village and Eva Rosenwald of
Eva Rosenwald nonstop."

The Drowsy Chaperone will be performed through Dec. 26 at the Performance
Network Theatre,120 E. Huron, in Ann Arbor. Performances are 8 p.m.
Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays and 3 p.m. Saturdays, Nov. 27 and Dec.11.
$27-$46, with discounts for members, seniors and students. (734) 663-0681;
www.performancenetwork.org .

Jews

_a_ I Nate Bloom
l vw
Special to the Jewish News

Oar

New Flicks

IC Based on the memoir of the same
name by former CIA agent Valerie
Flame, whose career was destroyed
when her covert identity was exposed
by a politically motivated press leak
it
out of the Bush White House, the
film Fair Game opens Friday, Nov.19.
Directed by Doug Liman, 45, the film
stars Naomi Watts as Flame and Sean
Penn, 50, as Wilson.
Watts says that
while shooting
scenes in Jordan,
she and her fiance,
Liev Schreiber, 43,
took a break and
made their first visit
to
Israel, which they
Doug Liman

I

68

November 18 s 2010

really enjoyed.
Flame wrote that the one happy
benefit of her "outing" was that a
Jewish relative got in contact with
her; previously unaware of her Jewish
background, she discovered her
paternal grandfather — the son of a
rabbi — was cut off by his family when
he wed her Protestant grandmother.
Love and Other Drugs stars Jake
Gyllenhaal, 29, as a womanizer who
is guided into a good job as a Pfizer
drug salesman by his geek brother
(Josh Gad, 29).
Playing their parents
are George Segal,
76, and the late Jill
Clayburgh, in her last
screen role. Directed
and co-written by

Josh Gad

Edward Zwick,
58, the film opens

Wednesday, Nov. 24.
Clayburgh, who died of leukemia on
Nov. 5 at age 66, was the daughter
of a Protestant mother and a Jewish
father. Her paternal great-great-great-
grandfather was Major Benjamin
Nones, a French Jew who was a
military aide to both the Marquis de
Lafayette and George Washington
during the Revolutionary War.

True Story

Adam

Lambert

Last year at this
time, season eight
American Idol final-
ist Adam Lambert,
28, caused quite a bit
of controversy and
fallout with his highly
criticized performance
at the American Music
Awards. But look

who's got the last laugh. Airing oppo-
site the AMA telecast this year, at 9
p.m. Sunday, Nov. 21, on the E! Network
is El True Hollywood Story, featur-
ing none other than the multi-octave
singer currently enjoying a sold-out
world tour in support of his debut CD,
For Your Entertainment.
The program will feature Lambert's
thoughts on his personal and profes-
sional journey, along with interviews
with his mom Leila, dad Eber and
brother Neil.
Says the singer, "My fans have been
really supportive of my choice to be
open and upfront about my sexuality
and my lifestyle. I have come from
the belief that hiding something from
people and manipulating what they
think of you is far more offensive and
disrespectful than just being upfront
and being who you are." El