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With its strong appeal to a specific section of the market, it's easy to see why La Cage aux Folles was such a hit in 1983. There's a middle-aged former beauty, hating what the mirror shows but forcing herself to face life and "put a little more mascara on". There's a preoccupied man, sometimes neglecting his wife, but responding to her tantrums with understanding and reassurance. There's even a hymn to mother love, sung by the father, later reprised by the son: "Someone puts himself last/So that you can come first."
Yes, "himself" is the right word, for the "mother" and "wife" is Albin, a drag artiste at the St Tropez nightclub run by Georges, his lover of 20 years. The two have raised a son, the result of Georges' one night of curiosity, who wants to marry the daughter of a right-wing politician. Albin is asked to disappear while the politician visits – but will he? This is not a plot but a situation, and an idiotic one, not greatly improved by Harvey Fierstein's mediocre, dated book and Jerry Herman's bouncy-schmaltzy songs.
Yet all objections vanish in the face of Terry Johnson's effervescent production. Transforming the Menier into a rose-coloured nightclub, he has assembled a crack cast, including a troupe of pouting, shrieking imitation girls who leap on to the ringside tables. Though he overdoes the hysteria at first, Douglas Hodge becomes a genuinely touching Albin, making that pub-singalong standard 'The Best of Times' an affecting plea for tenderness. Una Stubbs as the politician's wife and Tara Hugo as a nightclub proprietress are the personification of, respectively, mature sweetness and mature cosmopolitan charm. And when Jason Pennycooke's French maid, a ruffle-clad, wriggling bundle of camp comes on, you can practically smell the Narcisse Noir.
Best of all is Philip Quast, who, in a moustache and wig that makes him look like Don Ameche's father, is a purring benevolent Georges, gliding along with movements that are just a little too precise – he literally as well as figuratively never wants to put a foot wrong. More restrained emotionally than Albin, he manages to convey feelings at least as powerful in 'Song on the Sand', a reflection on long-lived, constant love. When one considers how many gay men provided the musical accompaniment to heterosexual romance, this gentle ballad strikes one as a coming-out that was a long time coming.
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© Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.
