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With the press night postponed twice after leading man Douglas Hodge developed bronchitis, the delay to see this production seems almost as long as the wait for a revival of Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein's 1983 musical on a London stage.
It's based on the hit French play and film about Georges, the owner of a risqué St Tropez club, and his long-time drag queen boyfriend Albin. The couple try to play it straight, with hilarious consequences, when the son they have raised gets engaged to the daughter of an outspoken family values crusader.
I'm as much a fan of the American remake The Birdcage as I am of the French film but the song-and-dance version, last staged in the West end in 1986, is new to me. Terry Johnson’s production in the excruciatingly cramped Menier Chocolate Factory only partly wins me over
On the upside, the form is a perfect vehicle for the drag artistes and Johnson brings the small auditorium to life with an array of (nearly) all-male "Cagelles", who are among the best things in the show. It's also a joy to hear the words of the anthem 'I Am What I Am' - before Gloria Gaynor made it her own - actually make sense.
But in the "offstage" scenes where the ghastly in-laws-to-be come to dinner, Herman's generally bland score gets in the way of the beautifully constructed comedy of the original.
As for the production itself, I wish Johnson had had the courage to update the piece from its Seventies roots. There is nothing in the script to prevent Georges and Albin being an entirely modern male couple, and the excellent Jason Pennycooke, Jacob and the Cagelles dancers could all be 21st-century creations.
But Hodge (Albin), utterly charismatic in drag, is less confident sans wig, in a tired pastiche of an effeminate gay man based somewhere between John Inman and Hilda Ogden. Philip Quast, for all his fine singing voice, plays Georges as a block of wood, and one of the junior members of the cast should have his Equity card ripped up for the mincing that is meant to show he has turned gay.
There is a delightful cameo by Una Stubbs and the spirited second act builds to a touching and surprisingly radical climax. But the production is hampered by an affinity-gap with the world it purports to portray, and my loyalty is still to the film versions.
© The Express
