A cast shot in a scene from the production of The Drowsy Chaperone at PPAC.

It’s pretty campy, but also very clever. The tour of The Drowsy Chaperone that pulled into the Providence Performing Arts Center this week is a fun night of theater.

The show, the most celebrated musical of the 2006 Broadway season, is a sort of homage to the musicals of yore, a loving look at the magic of theater.

At its heart is a cornball musical about a starlet who is willing to give up the stage for love. It’s a stylized spoof on the musicals of the 1920s, with a plot that’s skimpy and groaning humor that’s awfully hokey.

“Ever spent any time in a coma?” asks one of the characters. “No, but I’ve got a cousin in Seattle,” comes the reply.

But then there is the mousy narrator, the so-called Man in Chair, who adds a whole other dimension to this unusual show.

Man in Chair, played with endearing candor by Canadian actor Jonathan Crombie, is just the opposite of the glamorous characters of the stage show, an introverted, insecure sort who seems to have no life other than holing up in his seedy apartment and listening to scratchy LPs of vintage musicals.

His favorite is called The Drowsy Chaperone. As he drops the needle on his hi-fi, this old-fashioned show springs to life. Characters pop from his refrigerator and come waltzing in from the wings.

As the musical unfolds, Man in Chair provides a running commentary, pointing out to the audience the show’s highpoints and some of its flaws. During a goofy song about a monkey on a pedestal, he says here’s a nifty number, as long as you ignore the lyrics.

He’s also got reservations about an Abbott and Costello-style gag in which vodka is mistaken for ice water. That turns out to be little more than a series of predictable spit takes.

What we have is essentially a self-reflective parody of a musical that takes a look at itself in the mirror of an insider, and that’s kind of entertaining, especially for those who might not be big musical theater fans to begin with. It’s a fast-paced show (performed in about 90 minutes without intermission) about an unassuming loser who lives to be transported by a night of theater. We step into his imagination and learn from a total theater addict what makes a show tick, in a long, somewhat neurotic soliloquy.

At times we get swept up in the action of the 1920s show and the impending wedding of Robert Martin, a dashing playboy, and actress Janet Van De Graaff. Then all of a sudden the phone rings or the record gets stuck, and the bubble bursts. We are jerked back into the mundane world of Man in Chair.

The show, in fact, teeters between Man in Chair’s unremarkable existence and his rich fantasy world of the musical, where characters fall hopelessly in love and get whisked away to Rio on the wings of a funky biplane.

Halfway through the evening there is a fake intermission, and as the action starts up again we find ourselves in the middle of a King and I knock off with characters dressed in outlandish Oriental costumes, speaking with Asian accents. What has this got to do with anything, you wonder? Nothing, it turns out. Man in Chair put on the wrong record. Before long we are once again following the on-again-off-again romance of Robert and Janet.

Drowsy Chaperone comes across as a fairly intimate show, even though the cast is large and the sets are pretty elaborate. As the show unfolds, Man in Chair’s apartment begins to melt away, and we enter the colorful world of the privileged.

With his wedding just moments away, Mark Ledbetter’s apprehensive Robert sings about cold feet, as he launches into a sizzling tap routine with best man George, played by Richard Vida. In the song, cold feet become hot, as sirens scream and smoke covers the floor.

The big voice in the show belongs to Andrea Chamberlain, who plays Janet, the bride. She was terrific in “Show Off,” when she sings about swearing off stage life while indulging in all sorts of call-attention-to-herself behavior, like twirling a baton and spinning plates on sticks.

James Moye’s over-the-top Latin lover Aldolpho was responsible for some of the many comic touches. He is sent by Janet’s cigar-chomping producer to seduce Janet in an effort sabotage her wedding, but he ends up in bed with Janet’s martini-swigging chaperone, played by Nancy Opel. Opel was a hoot, but unfortunately sang with a pronounced and annoying wobble.

Georgia Engel, best remembered for her years on the Mary Tyler Moore Show and more recently Everybody Loves Raymond, reprises her Broadway role of ditzy Mrs. Tottendale, who is forever cooing with a vacant look, “There’s going to be a wedding?”

In this time when so many musicals are nothing more than tired rehashings of films, it’s nice to find a show that’s so fresh and original. Although it is somewhat scaled back.

Don’t go looking for a lot of big bombastic show numbers, in other words, or a lot or knock-em-dead musical offerings. Drowsy Chaperone is in a way the antithesis of the Broadway blockbuster, a show that harks back more to the innocent if somewhat corny days of vaudeville.

But you have to take all the corn with a grain of salt, and see it as just part of the fun.

The Drowsy Chaperone runs through Sunday at the Providence Performing Arts Center, 220 Weybosset St. Tickets range from $41 to $68. Call (401) 421-2787, or log on to www.ppacri.org.

cgray@projo.com