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I never warmed much to this Jerry Herman-Harvey Fierstein musical back in 1986: its portrait of a gay marriage, before such things were legalised, seemed as cosy as The Sound of Music. But Terry Johnson's terrific revival scores in two ways over the original: it surrounds the central relationship with a louche wildness and boasts a masterly comic performance from Douglas Hodge as the rhinestoned hero.
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The gay abandon of the chorus deftly counterpoints the tender relationship between the club's owners, Georges and Albin: one briefly threatened by the proposed marriage of the former's son to the daughter of a rantingly homophobic politician. Philip Quast lends Georges a dapper composure and fine singing voice. But, as in the original, it is Albin who steals the limelight. Hodge brilliantly combines a leering relish in the cabaret numbers, where he suggests a muscular Dusty Springfield, with a domestic outrage at being marginalised for the meeting with the future in-laws.
© Guardian Newspapers Ltd.
