The Sunday Times
13 January 2008
LA CAGE AUX FOLLES
by David Jays
***

 

It's a Feydeau farce with show tunes: a guy brings his fiancée's ultraconservative family to meet his gay dads at their trannie nightclub. At the intimate Menier, the club seems less Moulin Rouge than Vauxhall Tavern: les girls, bless 'em, are a bit rough, leering amid assertively ruched curtains. Terry Johnson's amiable production has a fitting middle-aged spread, for the first Broadway smash to treat homosexuality also tackles a rarer theme: long-term domesticity, and how love endures despite hissy fits and saggy flesh. Philip Quast remains devoted ("If you can't be truthful, be vague") to Douglas Hodge's roguish drag queen. Hodge gurgles and growls through his numbers (singing in G – "no, G flat: it's been a long day"), making "I am what I am" a nervous breakdown in gold lamé. Once more with glitterball.

 

© Times Newspapers Ltd.

 

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