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No fringe venue can generate as much first-night excitement as the Menier Chocolate Factory. This is partly because of the theatre's still-amazing track record of turning fringe fare into West End hits.
But, for this revival of Jerry Herman's gender-bending musical, tension was raised a tad more than usual because the production's star, Douglas Hodge, got a nasty bout of bronchitis resulting in a twice-delayed press night. But boy, he is worth waiting for.
Hodge plays Albin, drag queen and king of tantrums, at St Tropez nightclub La Cage Aux Folles.
Off-stage "she" is the high-maintenance boyfriend of Philip Quast's suave Georges, La Cage's debonair if slightly portly proprietor.
To provide the required air of decadence, the Chocolate Factory's stage has been decked out in red velvet with a few cocktail tables scattered around. They serve as pedestals for the well-drilled and eye-wateringly athletic, predatory male chorus. The show's joke used to be that you could not tell who in the chorus line was male and who was female. But in a venue too small to hide an Adam's apple, director Terry Johnson has opted for decadence rather than gender obfuscation.
As for the plot, it is simple — George's son Jean-Michel (Neil McDermott) is getting married to the daughter of Monsieur Renaud, a local anti-gay bigwig bigot (Iain Mitchell). To present an image of family harmony and moral rectitude, Georges and Albin pretend to be Jean-Michel's parents.
But Johnson never gets the full comic potential out of the situation. And the scene where Mitchell's conservative Renaud is disguised as a drag queen in order to hide from paparazzi falls spectacularly flat. So flat, it comes across as a cruel and unusual punishment by the club's transvestites during which he is harassed and humiliated. It is been a long time since I felt so illiberal.
Up until then, the evening belongs to a quality Quast and a rather brilliant Hodge who transmits Albin's sweet-hearted vulnerability and, during the show-stopping number 'I Am What I Am', his pride too.
