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Dress ’em to the teeth, or strip ’em down to their skivvies. That’s how London is treating its musicals these days. Broadway producers shopping the West End for souvenir song-and-dance shows to take home will find they come in two sizes: extra-large and loud (like the ear-blasting, eye-scalding Sister Act and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) or stylishly preshrunk (the scaled-down revivals of La Cage aux Folles and A Little Night Music). But it seems safe to say that none of them are going to be the next Billy Elliot.
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The season’s other big cross-dressing musical is, uh, small. That’s the surprisingly appealing revival of La Cage aux Folles, Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein’s 1983 musical, adapted from the French movie from .... (Oh, not again. Can I skip this part?) I was in no hurry to see La Cage after the slick and empty Broadway revival of 2004. But this version, directed by Terry Johnson and imported from the Menier Chocolate Factory in the Southwark neighborhood, triumphs by being anti-slick.
Starring the sublime Roger Allam (in a part originated, to acclaim, by Douglas Hodge in this revival) and Philip Quast as the couple who run a tourist-friendly Riviera transvestite revue, this La Cage is sweet, seedy and affectingly human. The nightclub of the title is presented as a run-down joint, and its “girls” are very (very) obviously men beneath their feathers and bustiers. The discrepancy between aspiration and reality is always clear.
Mr. Allam, a strapping fellow who wears his dresses with sincerity, and Mr. Quast traffic charmingly in the old-style conventions of the British music hall and melodrama. They’re the most engaging old couple of tramps this side of Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in the West End Waiting for Godot.
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