Paul Melendy on 'The Drowsy Chaperone' – 'It Just Kind Of All Clicked'

EDGE: It must be a lonely process for you in the rehearsal room, since your character doesn't interact with the rest of the cast.

Paul Melendy: Yeah, I am sort of segregated from the rest of the cast. They're not allowed to look at me or acknowledge me. It is kind of lonely, but I'm hoping once we have audiences that I will find moments to check in with them, and play with them a little.

At the Lyric, the audience is very close to the stage, and where I'm situated, I'm sort of up against that house left section, and there's a couple chairs right there. I'm hoping to make the chair that's closest to me a friend throughout that show, and keep coming back to them and checking in with them – which is hard to do [in rehearsal] because we don't have them there yet. In that sense, it'll be a whole other thing once we open.

EDGE: I wonder if the experience will be like your solo show, "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" – for which you won the Elliot Norton Award last year. Congratulations on that!

Paul Melendy: Thank you. I think you're right, and in that show I didn't really know if Paul Melendy, the person, would show up until we had an audience. In that same way, I won't know what this show will be until I have people out there who will give back to me, and I can respond and play with them.

EDGE: The show's got a fantastic cast – Maureen Keiller, Mark Linehan, Ilyse Robbins, Damon Singletary, Kathy St. George, and so many others. It must be a pleasure, even if you're relegated off to the side, to be watching them.

Paul Melendy: Oh, my god. Yeah, I am just in awe watching them, and I get to watch the show every night, which is really great. Just to see these people work is so fun, and I find myself grinning at rehearsal – which is great for the character, because that's exactly the sentiment he's supposed to have. I feel giddy watching these people work at their craft in this way.

EDGE: My favorite line in the show is when Man in Chair says at the end of Act One something like, "You're surprised that I was married? Don't make assumptions about people." In the play as I've seen it, and even when you hear the Broadway cast recording, it seems the actor playing Man in Chair has been directed to play gay a little bit so that the audience will make an assumption: "Obviously, he's gay! He's listening to a musical." Is that how you're playing the role?

Paul Melendy: I think that's correct. A lot of the text lends itself to that idea that he's a gay man, and he talks endlessly about this [fictitious] actor, Percy Hyman – he loves Percy Hyman, and he likes to envision him sweating after a long dance number. I mean, they're not mincing words here. He peppers in a lot of not-so-subtle gay nods throughout, and I'm playing up the gayness of it all. I don't know what word to say here. I don't want to offend anybody.

EDGE: I don't know that it's offensive, although I do think that the flipside here is how the show is making fun of heterosexual high jinks.

Paul Melendy: Yeah, exactly. It definitely plays with that a lot, and pokes fun at the absurdity of it.

EDGE: You need a narrator who's gay, I think, if you're gonna pull that off.

Paul Melendy: I think so. I think he has that flavor, and helps to connect those larger ideas of the play to the audience.

EDGE: A little more serious, though, is how Man in Chair seems to talk about theater in the same way people nostalgic for some golden past era will talk about the way things used to be – an imaginary world where we can feel safe and enjoy ourselves.

Paul Melendy: Yeah. We look at life through rose-tinted glasses, of course, but I think in a broader sense what's great about theater is that no matter where you come from, how you grew up, or what you believe, once we're all in this room we are experiencing the same show together.

"The Drowsy Chaperone" plays at the Lyric Stage Company of Boston from April 5 – May 12. For tickets and more information, follow this link.