The September opening of the Drowsy Chaperone at the Elgin Theatre had all the trappings of a capital “O” occasion. The flashes lit up at the red carpet arrivals; by and large, the beau monde looked the part, exfoliated and coiffed, with festive clothes steamed and pressed. Milling about before the show were three of its creators: Don McKellar (responsible, with Bob Martin, for the book), Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison (joint writers of the music and lyrics). They were smiling and glad-handing all and sundry—and as well they might, given that the Broadway run is estimated to have earned each of them close to $1 million, and the continental tour is likely to pull in yet more.

After the performance, smart cocktails and even smarter hors d’oeuvre cascaded down through the Elgin’s tiered lobbies—arborio rice balls, liquor-cured salmon, skewered shrimp. In the middle of a crush of well-wishers was the diminutive, bald man who’d made the show’s latest local revival (and the deluxe after-party) possible, producer Aubrey Dan. Drowsy’s triumphant opening was an event he’d meticulously planned, going so far as to retain Pink Tartan’s Kimberly Newport-Mimran to redesign the Elgin staff’s uniforms and employing his personal and corporate chef, Kyle Hepburn, to make the aforementioned hors d’oeuvre. Nothing was too micro for Dan in this, the start of Dancap Productions’ inaugural season of musicals. Dan didn’t speak on Drowsy’s opening night, but many in the crowd remembered his last speech in the same setting, another spare-no-expense party held in April to announce the formation of his production company and its imminent arrival on the scene. “This is bigger than my wedding,” he beamed to the crowd of 1,200 assembled on that occasion. “Bigger than my bar mitzvah.” Some sophisticated eyebrows were raised at his lack of polish, but most of the crowd was won over by his evident sincerity.

There are no self-confidence problems here. Interviewed in his solarium-like office in a skyscraper near Yonge and Sheppard, the billionaire’s son will tell me, without irony, how he likes to think outside the box. He speaks in swoops, sometimes oblivious to the probable perspective of the listener. “I’m not materialistic,” he says. “I don’t drive fancy cars. My biggest extravagance, which is not really an extravagance, is having a chef.” And he takes a bullishly broad view of his own capabilities. “Really, my expertise is marketing…sales…business development…managing…leading.” His first season is filled with serious contenders for hit status, from the Tony-winning Drowsy Chaperone to touring productions of Broadway favourites: Avenue Q, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and Jersey Boys. It was no mean feat for Dan to secure the rights to these productions—as, of course, he’ll tell you himself.

But if he presents as part shark, he’s also, everyone agrees, part schlemiel. Below his well-cut casual-Fridays office wear he tends to favour funky, gleaming sneakers, sometimes stealing a peek at them like a teenager in the first days of school, proud of his too-new shoes. This, then, is the fellow who would unseat David Mirvish as the top producer of big-budget theatre in the city. But can this apparently affable, fairly geeky businessman pull it off?

Like David Mirvish, Dan is the son of a remarkable man, albeit perhaps a smaller hero than the late, lamented Honest Ed. A Hungarian Holocaust survivor, the 18-year-old Leslie Dan came to Canada in 1947 and spent his first years in the country working as a lumberjack, picking tobacco, and waiting tables at the Silver Rail on Yonge. While boarding in a rooming house, he put himself through the pharmacy program at U of T, graduating in 1954. From a renovated garage behind J&J Chemists, an old pharmacy on Euclid Avenue, he filled prescriptions for fellow eastern European immigrants, many to be sent to relatives then behind the Iron Curtain.

He founded Novopharm in 1965, and business grew, eventually with the help of his two sons. The eldest, brainy Michael, a neurosurgeon with an MBA, was well-suited to work in the biotech arm, which he would eventually head. Aubrey, meanwhile, was charged with moving product.

This seemed a good fit for the younger son, since he’s always loved to sell. Family lore has it that two dogs once devoured most of the apple pie his grandmother made for a garage sale he’d organized. “We had about two or three pieces left,” Dan recalls. “Should I chuck it in the garbage? No, let’s sell it. At maybe a slightly distressed price, but still sell it.”