Tuneful and tourist-friendly, this old-fashioned musical by Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein, featuring a long-time gay couple and their nightclub of dancing drag queens in St. Tropez, racked up Tony Awards for each of the three times it ran on Broadway. But much has happened in the 15 years since the last revival closed. This is why it looked promising that Robert O’Hara was directing the Encores concert version, with an all-Black cast led by Billy Porter and Wayne Brady. Surely O’Hara, both a prankish playwright (Bootycandy, Barbecue) and a daring director (Slave Play), would make something new and intriguing out of a musical that was seen as an anachronism even at its 1983 debut.
There are signs that O’Hara is indeed trying some new approaches, but the opening night performance offered more signs that the show, to put it charitably, hasn’t quite come together yet.
“La Cage Aux Folles” began life as a 1973 stage play, a French farce that was adapted into a popular 1978 French movie. From the get-go, the main characters have always been Albin (now portrayed by Porter), the difficult, moody, flamboyant (i.e. effeminate) star of the drag club (also called La Cage Aux Folles) in which Georges (Brady), his lover of 20 years, is the patient proprietor. The setting gave the choreographers of the musical adaptation the freedom to go retro, with Busby Berkeley-like chorines (the “Cagelles”) parading elegantly in elaborate, identical feather headdresses. O’Hara ditches the uniformity in the opening number, “We Are What We Are,” with each performer wearing their own individual look, and dancing in their own individual way, like so many present-day divas. Both the costumes and the choreography are from the 21st century.
It’s a significant change, perhaps intended to drive home that these people really are individuals. The creative team is adept at handling some of the standard show-stopping numbers from the musical, as this montage suggests
It’s not a stretch, though, to wonder whether O’Hara is reaching for a transformation similar to the one that directors Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch attempt 11 blocks away, more successfully, with “CATS: The Jellicle Ball.”
Whatever else the updated looks and moves accomplish, it provokes the question: What year is the action taking place now? This matters because of everything in the show other than the 16 musical numbers – the plot.
Georges and Albin have raised a son, Jean-Michel (Alaman Diadhiou), who has fallen in love with Anne (Rachel Webb), the daughter of a right-wing politician (Peter Francis James) and announces that he is going to marry her. The son wants to win over his future in-laws, so he invites them over to dinner, but asks his parents to pretend they are not a couple and have nothing to do with the drag queen club downstairs; indeed, he asks Albin to disappear for the evening because his effeminacy is too much a give-away. But Albin has a different plan.
At this point, broad farce is supposed to ensue. But it didn’t really work for me in this production. Perhaps it was a matter of pacing. Perhaps the cast hadn’t had enough time to rehearse; Brady and Porter are both charismatic performers, but they were still on opening night largely reading from scripts. (This was once standard practice at Encores! concerts, but rare over the past few years.) It”s also possible that the plot didn’t work for me because it’s now 2026.
Many theatergoers might simply welcome “La Cage Aux Folles,” feeling that, to paraphrase a song from a different Jerry Herman hit, It’s so nice to see it back where it belongs. “I am what I am” has long been a gay anthem, and some accept the show itself as not just an entertainment, but a landmark in LGBTQ rights. I’ve always felt more ambivalent.
Composer Jerry Herman and original director Arthur Laurents were long-standing figures in musical theater, but it was the young Harvey Fierstein who had the out-and-proud credentials at the time they collaborated on turning La Cage into a musical. Fierstein was making his Broadway debut as the star of a play he wrote with a gay theme, “Torchsong Trilogy,” a groundbreaker of sorts. It strikes me as no coincidence that the musical they came up with could be seen as a trailblazer, but calculated to be unthreatening. While the mainstream audience was laughing and humming along in comfort and familiarity, they would also be taking in the message that gay people can love too; can be like any old married couple — see, that one plays the man; the other one is the woman — if slightly more ridiculous. They can even have a family.
This implicit plea for tolerance feels at best inadequate, at a time when same sex marriage has been legalized nationwide since 2015, there are growing number of public figures of accomplishment who are trans, and at the same time the ruling national political party is conducting a widespread campaign against trans people (as I catalogued in some detail in my review of another resurrected entertainment from the past Dog Day Afternoon)
After leaving New York City Center, I looked again at the original French movie, which is available on Amazon Prime (there is also a 1996 American movie adaptation, The Birdcage, with Robin Williams and Nathan Lane.) There is something of a surreal tone to the presentation of Albin and Georges world,as if the filmmaker acknowledges it to be upside-down from reality. But also in this film version, it is not the son’s idea to have his parents pretend to be straight; his girlfriend inadvertently traps him into going along. This makes more sense to me, especially if this is now supposed to be taking place in the present. How can we be asked to accept a plot premised on such a cruel act by such an inexplicably callow young man?
That same son, as it happens, offers one of the bright moments in a production that is colorfully designed, and carefully tuned, but is still finding its legs. Diadhiou is tip-top in the tap choreography by the one-named Dormeshia,
La Cage Aux Folles is at New York City Center through June 28.
COMMUNITY BLOCK PARTYFri Jun 26 at 5:30 – 7pm
Celebrate Pride with free drag performances, live music, and DJ 2FACE, hosted by Shequida Hall. Enjoy drink and merch specials in the through-block atrium adjacent to City Center at 6 1/2 Avenue
