As the overhead lights dim, the glint in the two chandeliers waning to darkness, a voice fills Progress Energy’s Memorial Auditorium.

Submersed in blackness, this anxious, droning, disembodied voice relays to the audience exactly what he doesn’t want a play to be: a three-hour long monstrosity, during which cast members wander through the audience as if, the man says, that’s what they paid for.

He begins to pray to God that this isn’t that kind of play.

The voice stops. The theatre is still pitch black. And then it starts again, telling of old woes spurred by his previous rant.

When footlights finally illuminate the stage, the audience’s eyes focus on a small, cluttered set. It’s a New York City loft, plastered with photographs and memoirs. It’s old-fashioned — the refrigerator has a slight ’50s curve to it, the couches and chairs are the ones you’d find at grandma’s house, the bedding looks as if it were dragged years ago from an old trunk.

And to the far left sits a man, draped in grays and browns, looking with rapt attention at the audience. He’s perched beside a phonograph; but in accordance with The Drowsy Chaperone‘s prevailing motifs, this record player isn’t really a phonograph. It’s both a time machine and a hologram machine.

He — aptly christened “Man in Chair,” played by Johnathan Crombie — pulls out a record from the stack. He turns it over, describes it. The Drowsy Chaperone his favorite record, one he received from his mother right before his father left them (the events were unrelated, but he said the record probably didn’t help matters much).

After a long prelude, Man in Chair asks the audience a pivotal question.

“Would you indulge me? Would you let me play the record for you now?” he asks.

The audience claps.

“I was hoping you’d say yes.”

He places the disc on the three-in-one machine. And as the needle traces over its grooves, it’s Nov. 1928 and the audience is transported to a Broadway theatre (which still happens to be located inside Man in Chair’s apartment), about to witness a night of “mix-ups, mayhem, and a gay wedding.”

The whole casts arrives at his apartment, dressed in the frillery of the 1920s, and usurps it from him. But since they’re not really there — the audience only sees what he’s imagining — they don’t leave gray marks when they tap dance to a number called “Cold Feets,” or even rumple the bedspread when they jump onto his bed.

The beauty of this play is evident even before the lights come on. The plot isn’t intricate — it’s actually rather predictable. It’s the wedding day of two young, up-and-coming elite: the groom, Robert Martin, earnestly wants to take the hand of Janet Van De Graaff, a famous actress willing to throw her career away in the name of love.

Everything’s going smoothly — the plans are in order, the alcohol, despite prohibition, is flowing — until two gangsters, disguised as pastry chefs, attempt to threaten Feldzeig, Janet’s manager, into thwarting the wedding — if the leading lady gets married, she’ll no longer be a leading lady.

With each scene the plot twists — a rope getting more taught by the minute as characters are blindfolded, disguised and kept apart by the drowsy [read: toasted] chaperone, who seduces Aldolpho, a Latin lover sent in to sleep with the bride and break up the marriage. The woman he believes to be the bride isn’t. The woman Robert believes to be a French woman named MiMi isn’t French. Even the intermission isn’t an intermission.

The Drowsy Chaperone is irony wrapped in comedy wrapped in song, topped off with the Leave it to Beaver ideals and accents of the early 1900s.

It’s the kind of tale a sad, middle-aged, self-proclaimed “blue” man would spend his afternoons immersed in. It’s so very vintage 1920s — overdressed and overacted — that you can’t help but laugh at Feldzeig, played by Cliff Bemis, who bellows “How?!” a number of times before returning to his original state and walking off the stage, apparently having forgotten his frustration. You can’t help but sympathize with and relate to Man in Chair, and to start loving the play as much as he does.

The dialogue, routines, and cast are so high-energy that even when you know the scene is completely ridiculous, you can’t look away — although it’s mostly this ridiculousness that defines the play, gives its characters character, draws you in.

And once the final scene arrives, the rope is let go, and it’s a free-for-all. Where it was once hidden, the characters find love. Those who were once blindfolded and undercover unveil their secrets. And Man in Chair, who so longingly desires to be transported within the play, gets a surprise of his own.

At an hour and 40 minutes, it’s a play worth seeing.

See it

Thursday, Feb. 14

Progress Energy Center Memorial Auditorium | 8 p.m.

Friday, Feb. 15

Progress Energy Center Memorial Auditorium | 8 p.m.

Saturday, Feb. 16

Progress Energy Center Memorial Auditorium | 2 p.m.; 8 p.m.

Sunday, Feb. 17

Progress Energy Center Memorial Auditorium | 2 p.m.; 7 p.m.