“Oh dear God, please let it be a good show. I just want a story and a few good songs,” says Man in Chair plaintively, speaking at the top of The Drowsy Chaperone, and this audience member was right with him.

Man (Jonathan Crombie), a shy depressive in a shapeless brown cardigan, plays an LP (remember those?) of his favorite musical – 1928’s The Drowsy Chaperone – whenever he gets blue. Never mind that there were neither LPs nor this show at the time. But he wants to be our tour guide through the show.

As the music plays, the stage becomes the set, actors and dancers appear and the show begins, right in this dingy apartment.

The plot? Broadway singing sensation Janet Van De Graaff (Andrea Chamberlain) prepares to abandon the stage in order to marry Robert Martin (Mark Ledbetter), son of an oil magnate. It is, like most musical comedy plots, merely a frame to hang the musical numbers on.

Every musical comedy cliché in the book is here, along with fabulous costumes, several good songs and some long-legged dancers hoofing it for us in this affectionate send-up of the form.

The touring company of The Drowsy Chaperone, with music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison and book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar, plays through Sept. 28 at Civic Theatre, under the auspices of Broadway San Diego.

Begun as a sketch for Martin’s bachelor party, the show includes standard characters like a dizzy blonde, a Latin lover, a vapid leading man, a couple of vaudevillians and a pair of gangsters who seem to have wandered in from Kiss Me, Kate. Oh, and The Drowsy Chaperone (Alicia Irving), drink in hand, who sings Dorothy Parker-style, “Keep your eyeball on the highball in your glass.”

If you hate musicals, you probably won’t like this one either. But if you’re a devotee, prepare for a good time.

The Drowsy Chaperone plays through Sept. 28 at Civic Theatre. Shows Thursday at 7:30 p.m.; Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 1 and 6 p.m. For tickets call 619-570-1100 or Ticketmaster 619-220-TIXS.