The cast cuts loose in a scene from The Drowsy Chaperone, a touring version of the 2006 Broadway hit about a theater fan who lives out his fantasies while listening to a recording of his favorite 1928 musical. It opens at PPAC on Tuesday.

Joan Marcus Agency

Talk about humble beginnings. The Drowsy Chaperone, the most celebrated musical of the 2006 Broadway season, began as entertainment for a stag party.

That was a decade ago, when friends of writer-actor Bob Martin got together to create a spoof of 1920s musicals for his bachelor gathering. What they came up with was a 30-minute skit that, with some tweaking, would become a smash hit.

Tuesday the show opens at the Providence Performing Arts Center.

It was Martin’s involvement that led to the show’s success. When creators Lisa Lambert, Greg Morrison and Don McKellar decided to rework their mini-musical for the Toronto Fringe Festival, Martin came on board as a co-writer and created the role of Man in Chair, the mousey narrator who spends his nights listening to a recording of a 1928 stage show called The Drowsy Chaperone. This new incarnation of the show topped all festival box office records.

“At the time, I was making money as a TV writer,” said Martin in an interview from his home in Toronto. “I thought I would be doing that for the rest of my life, but Drowsy just kind of grew and grew every time we staged it.”

Following the Fringe Festival, a Toronto commercial theater owner financed an expanded version of the show. It continued to attract interest and had an out-of-town engagement in Los Angeles in 2005. It landed on Broadway the following year, where Martin starred as Man in Chair for nearly 700 performances.

Martin called Drowsy Chaperone a “one-man show with a musical jammed inside it.”

There is the original musical, which hasn’t changed over the years. The plot of that is basic. A pampered Broadway starlet wants to give up show business to get married, while her producer tries to sabotage the wedding. The bride and groom in the show are named after Martin and his wife, Janet Van De Graaff.

But the addition of the Man in Chair character made the 90-minute musical far more complex. It became more about this somewhat depressed theater addict, and about theater in general, about being caught up in the magic of it all.

As Man in Chair’s story unfolds, you get to know him and all his hang-ups. He’s witty and likable, but living a life that is “sadly lacking in romance,” said Martin. What matters to him most, he said, is being transported by a night of theater.

“He’s disarmingly honest,” said Martin. “He can’t stop himself from talking about the darker details of his life, and I think people open up to that.”

Martin said that when he and McKellar, the other writer on the project, began talking about a narrative framework for the show, he stumbled upon a character who was “very recognizable to us all.”

He said that when he was performing the role of Man in Chair on Broadway, people from all over the world would come backstage and confess, “That’s me.

“There’s a universal quality to this guy,” said Martin. “He’s an outsider, but values theater so much in his life. It has so much importance to him. And I think people can relate to something external that makes up for a lack in their lives.”

The show takes place in the confines of Man in Chair’s shabby apartment. As he drops the needle on his favorite LP, the show comes to life. Characters pop from his refrigerator and the apartment begins to fall away.

Along the way, Man in Chair gives a running commentary of the show, even pointing out some of its flaws.

“Because it’s a kind of an annotated musical,” said Martin, “I think people who are not necessarily fans of musical theater will get a kick out of it.”

He said the show also appeals to husbands who “get dragged to musicals,” because it’s short with no intermission (it’s got a fake intermission) and the comedy is “sharp and quick.”

Since the success of The Drowsy Chaperone, Martin has been thought of more as a writer for theater. He is currently working with a different writing team on a new musical called Minsky’s, about burlesque impresario Billy Minsky. The show is set to open at the start of next year, with hopes of going to Broadway. Charles Strouse of Annie fame is writing the music.

He has also just signed on to a new television project that he can’t talk about yet.

With all the writing going on in his life, Martin said he misses acting, something he has done since he was a teenager on Canadian television. But after 700 performance of Drowsy Chaperone, he was ready to hand over the role of Man in Chair to his longtime friend, Canadian actor Jonathan Crombie, who is widely known for playing Gilbert Blythe in the popular Anne of Green Gables movies. Crombie was one of the actors in the original bachelor-party version of Drowsy Chaperone.

The Drowsy Chaperone has closed on Broadway, but productions are in the works in Australia, Japan and Sweden, said Martin.

He said he has rewritten the script for the tour. Specific references to the New York theater where the show took place have been dropped.

Drowsy Chaperone is not so much a parody of 1920s musicals as it is a tribute to shows from that period. Martin said the sketches are “quite sincere.”

“We’ve tried to be very authentic with the choreography, orchestration and the comedy in the show,” he said. “If you like Marx Brothers comedies, something like Animal Crackers, the comic sensibilities of the show are very much like that.”

While it’s a full-blown musical, the show was to an extent written as a reaction to the large spectaculars of the 1980s and 1990s, shows like The Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables. Drowsy Chaperone is more about the vaudeville tradition and individual performers, not spectacle.

“It’s more an homage to theater in general,” said Martin, “about the experience of going to theater and how exciting it can be.”

The Drowsy Chaperone opens Tuesday and runs through Sunday at the Providence Performing Arts Center, 220 Weybosset St. Tickets are $41-$68. Call (401) 421-2787.

cgray@projo.com