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Was playing a fabulous drag queen a bit of a stretch for the down-to-earth, blokey Douglas Hodge? Hardly, finds Maddy Costa
Before he became a bona fide actor, Douglas Hodge did impersonations of comedians and other famous people in working men's clubs, an act he once toured round Nato bases in Europe. There, he shared the stage with a troupe of dancing girls, the memory of which makes his blue eyes glitter. "The girls running off stage, with their fishnets and high heels and spidery eyelashes, chucking their clothes on the floor, the smell of them, the coarseness of it, was the sexiest thing." He pauses, frowns. "And now I'm backstage with the dancing girls doing all that."
Hodge is not an actor you would normally associate with dancing girls. He's blokey, salt-of-the-earth, sleeves-rolled-up, matter of fact. His older brother manages a construction firm; that's the kind of job you picture Hodge, 47, doing. Last year, he played brusque Sir Thomas Bertram in ITV's Mansfield Park; two years ago, he was Titus Andronicus at Shakespeare's Globe. Such roles make sense. But now he's starring in La Cage aux Folles, the musical that introduced 1980s Broadway to the idea that outrageous gay drag queens could be steadfast, nurturing, family men.
