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There's a triple threat of wonder, delight and exhilaration in the theatre this week that celebrates unconventional ways of looking at the world. In the process, the unique capabilities of the human body, as well as the infinite capacities of the heart, are all pressed into making great art.
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Soaring above it all, in every sense is the latest Cirque du Soleil show Varekai, making its British debut at the Royal Albert Hall,
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While Cirque's Love, its latest Las Vegas show, set to a Beatles soundtrack, is quite possibly the greatest spectacle of any I've ever seen, this earlier show delightfully demonstrates how it got there. Its performers like to see things from a different angle.
That's also the suggestion, coincidentally made by drag queen Albin in the 1993 Broadway musical version of the hit French comedy La Cage aux Folles, as he sings that great anthem of self-acceptance, 'I Am What I Am'. Douglas Hodge sings it with blazing conviction in a new, intentionally small-scale revival at the Menier Chocolate Factory and if both he and the production seem initially tentative, it delivers a bigger pay-off as this still surprisingly radical subversion of conventional family values takes hold.
A young man, raised by a male couple in a St Tropez drag nightclub, seeks to bring his fiancee's reactionary parents to dinner, but needs to hide the truth of his upbringing. That means asking his father (played by Philip Quast with warmth and resonance) to get his partner Albin to make himself scarce. Hodge plays the hurt of the suggestion with such truthfulness and invests Albin with so much charm and heart that it anchors the show.
The Menier, currently riding high with a West End transfer for its brilliant production of Dealer's Choice and a Broadway run of its staging of Sondheim's Sunday In The Park With George about to open, too, has brought La Cage to new life, as well as its own space, which does brilliant double duty as a nightclub now.
Thanks to Gregor for forwarding this review
© The Express
