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Matt Wolf reviews Nicholas Nickleby and La Cage aux Folles
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With luck, this La Cage will find the prolonged life it richly deserves, not least so audiences can feast on a central pairing that approaches the sublime. Most recently seen as a resonant-voiced Juan Perón in the revival of Evita, Quast brings great delicacy to Gene Barry's original Broadway part as the nightclub owner, Georges, this actor's trucker physique at delicious odds with the capering ease with which he chats up the audience.
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Hodge's risky performance, at once stylized and very shrewd, marks a huge departure for a performer one tends to associate with Chekhov, Shakespeare and Pinter, and he brings infinite modulation to what could be a shriekfest. Anyone who's seen Quast before knows the Australian performer can sing with the same easeful confidence with which he acts. But a Pinter expert sporting mascara and pumps and belting out the gay anthem, 'I Am What I Am,' that remains the best-known number of Jerry Herman's score? That's no more surprising than a musical that once seemed gaudy but superficial revealing behind the folderol a fierce and beating heart.
© 2008 the International Herald Tribune
