That’s a problem for her harried producer Mr. He’s the son of a wealthy oil magnate and she’s a showgirl whose marriage means the end of her stage career. The show-within-a-show revolves the wedding of Janet Van de Graaff (Stephanie Rothenberg) and Robert Martin (Clyde Alves). Because he’s feeling a bit blue, Man decides to play the entirety of the album and, as he imagines the musical in his mind, it comes to life right in his drab apartment (Howard Jones did the tricked-out set). He introduces the audience to his favorite musical, a (fictional) 1920s show called “The Drowsy Chaperone” which Man In Chair has never seen himself but has listened to obsessively since childhood. It concerns a lonely, skittish shut-in dubbed Man In Chair (John Scherer, hilarious) who first laments when actors relate directly to audience members during a play (“I didn’t pay good money to have the fourth wall come crashing down around my ears.”) before spending the next two hours doing just that. Written by Bob Martin & Don McKellar (book) and Lisa Lambert & Greg Morrison (music and lyrics), “Chaperone” is a fizzy 2006 Broadway smash that lovingly sends-up the long-forgotten shows of yesteryear.

It’s sweet and airy and has just enough heft to not merely float away. “The Drowsy Chaperone,” which closes Goodspeed’s 2017-2018 season is a highly entertaining cream puff of a play. Your “Sweeneys,” your “Spring Awakenings,” your “Next To Normals.” Shows that might leave you, as the unnamed narrator in “The Drowsy Chaperone” says, “a bit blue.” But between my usual diet of depressing theater and the dire state of our country right now, I have to agree with the so-called Man In Chair and give in to the fact that, sometimes, an old-fashioned musical is exactly what the doctor prescribed. Even though I’m generally a rather sunny guy, my taste in theater veers towards shows that some might call bummers.

The kind Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Connecticut is largely known for. You know, the kind with peppy tap numbers, sunny jokes and conflicts that resolve in a few bars of music.

I’ve never really cottoned to old song-and-dance musicals.

Goodspeed opera house season 2018