Gaiety, Forced & Otherwise
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“La Cage Aux Folles” is so timely it feels antique. Here’s a story about a gay couple – a nightclub owner and his transvestite star – and their son, who announces he plans to marry his sweetheart. Quelle horreur: She’s the daughter of a politician – a fanatically anti-gay conservative politician, the kind of beefy breeder who gets excited and bellows, “Homosexuals!”
Well, yes. Georges (Daniel Davis) and Albin (Gary Beach) are in love with each other, and with their son, Jean-Michel (Gavin Creel). They have chosen to live on the Riviera, where their lifestyle won’t clash with the decor. Yet the leader (Michael Mulheren) of the Tradition, Family and Morality Party (GOP), plans to shut down the clubs if he gets the chance. Jean-Michel wants to make a good impression on the in-laws, so tries to hide the club, and the flamboyant Albin. Crushed, Albin sings the show’s gospel: “Life’s not worth a damn / Till you can say, ‘Hey, world / I am what I am.'”
A humane request, and, these days, one regarded as something like a threat to the Republic. Songwriter Jerry Herman and librettist Harvey Fierstein have managed to fashion a diverting night at the theater from the headlines of the day. What’s funny – actually, no – what’s not funny at all, is that they wrote the show in 1983. With only a few tweaks here and there, the 21-year-old show opened again at the Marquis last night.
Topicality abounds, but nobody ought to go into the show expecting “The Normal Heart.” This is Broadway, after all. In fact, it’s a Broadway theater perched in the lobby of a Marriott hotel, a logistical stroke more brilliant than any parodist could devise. Fans of big Broadway musicals will like the show’s big Broadway music, and fans of big Broadway dancing will like the show’s big Broadway dances. (Also fans of big Broadway chorus boys will delight in “Les Cagelles,” who are like Knicks gone Rockette.)
The show’s relevance somehow amplifies it’s creaks. Mr. Herman’s songs strain with all their melodic might to capture the charm of old Broadway, a world that was sinking in 1983, and is today sunk. (Old Broadway today means Lloyd Webber, not Kern/Hammerstein.) When Georges introduces musical numbers from the stage, he alludes again and again to the scandalous nature of where we are and what we’re about to see. Did anybody buy this Kander-and-Ebbishness in 1983? It’s difficult to achieve a louche vibe in a room where ushers scan your tickets with bar-code lasers.
Mr. Fierstein wrote a lively, funny libretto to connect the songs. In formed that Jean-Michel has found a bride, Albin, already prone to hysterics, freaks out. “What have we raised, Georges, an animal? Snakes live male and female together! Cats live male and female together! We are human beings. We know better.”
It’s not just because Mr. Fierstein donned a capacious muumuu to play Edna Turnblad that “La Cage” reminds you of “Hairspray.” Georges turns up at one point in a jacket adorned with the Turnblad family crest: an electric blue and pinkish-reddish paisley. They share a sensibility, too. Both “La Cage” and its offspring preach inclusiveness for outsiders, be they plus-sized or same-sexing, with a spunky sense of humor. Yet compared to the ironic punch of “Hairspray,” or even “Avenue Q,” “La Cage” seems fussy, outmoded. Nothing in this show’s racial or sexual shtick matches the giddy subversion of the moment in “Hairspray” when Seaweed, the black kid, calmly flips open his switchblade to free Penny, the show’s captive soubrette.
“La Cage” is derived from Jean Poiret’s 1979 play of the same name, so of course you can’t entirely blame the show for not keeping up with the state of comedy a quarter-century distant. It’s grown tame, maybe in ways that will make it a big draw for audiences who like their musicals Broadway smooth and just an elevator ride from their suites.
The producers deserve credit for not casting lame television stars in the lead roles. The dignified Mr. Davis and excitable Mr. Beach are favorites of the New York theater, and do tolerably well under Jerry Zaks’s direction. Mr. Davis may be a little too dignified to play Georges, who runs a nightclub on the Riviera, after all. He seems to be concentrating on delivering the lyrics just right in his big first-act ballad.
Though not a very tall man, Nathan Lane casts a long shadow. Mr. Beach won a Tony for playing opposite Mr. Lane in “The Producers.” This was a few years after Mr. Lane played the Albin character in Mike Nichols’s film version of the story, “The Birdcage.” The combination of precedent and long exposure has rubbed off on Mr. Beach, whose every fourth or fifth line has a Lane-ish overtone. Still there are worse people to echo. Mr. Beach gets his laughs, and gives the show, however briefly, an emotional weight in “I Am What I Am.” After years of playing comedy, maybe it’s time for more drama?
As the cartoonish politician, Mr. Mulheren renews his claim to being Broadway’s leading heavy. The charismatic Mr. Creel will see his dreaminess quotient rise, even with that ridiculous ponytail. The design work has flashes, but not of inspiration. Scenic designer Scott Pask makes the stage of the club look like the stage of a Broadway theater. Choreographer Jerry Mitchell’s work here is strangely uneven, with plenty of inspired solo work but group numbers that grow dull.
But there I go sounding like a critic. The show has found an audience that doesn’t seem to mind such quibbles. From the time Mr. Fierstein’s distinctive croak told everyone to shut off their cell phones, to the gratuitous curtain-call reprise, the crowd reacted as if there were joy buzzers in the seats. A set revolve? Applause. A clever joke? Applause. A costume change? Applause, applause, applause.
I’d like to think the Marquis crowd will take the show’s message to heart; or, more specifically, take it back to whichever school board and congressional district they call home. Georges and Albin’s lingering final kiss (oddly tucked away, in a rear corner of the stage) doesn’t strike me as particularly inspiring. But hey, every little buss counts.
1535 Broadway, 212-307-4100.