In the big dance numbers and in some of the songs this once-radical Broadway musical – in 1983, the first to feature a gay central relationship – knocks it out of the park. But man oh man, the ropey storyline and the acting in Tim Sheader’s glitzy production drag it down.
It’s gorgeous to look at, thanks to fantastically camp set and costume designs and a supporting troupe of drag kings and queens. But it’s also dated and emotionally hollow, all lamé frock and no knickers, an imperfect swansong for Sheader at a venue he’s turned into a destination and a place to reappraise neglected musicals.
La Cage, adapted by Harvey Fierstein from Jean Poiret’s 1973 play, would seem to fit the bill. Set in a St Tropez drag club, it hinges on a boy’s attempts to get his two gay dads to deny their nature so as not to upset his fiancé’s father, a conservative politician. The score, by Jerry Herman, gave the Pride movement its enduring anthem of self-belief, I Am What I Am.
That plot feels as wispy and lightweight as a marabou feather today, its central conflicts artificially manufactured. To work it needs the borderline hysteria that Robin Williams and Nathan Lane brought to the non-musical 1996 film adaptation, the Birdcage. Here the exchanges between the songs are desultory and lack urgency: the decision to have almost everyone use Geordie instead of French accents may be partly to blame.
There’s no real sense of affection between Billy Carter’s suave but underpowered nightclub owner Georges and his flappy, melodramatic partner and star drag turn Albin (Carl Mullaney). Nor between Georges and the son he conceived in a night of heterosexual madness – a part in which Ben Culleton manages simultaneously to overact and be utterly wooden.
The bitchy backstage dialogue sounds phony now, and you notice how meagre the three biologically female characters are. Fortunately Jerry Herman knew how to write a hit tune: the louchely wistful, accordion-driven The Best of Times, the title number and I Am What I Am are standouts from this sparse score.
Mullaney rousingly sings the latter to bring the curtain down on Act One, and Carter brings a fluent, roguish charm to his songs. The best moments, though, come when choreographer Stephen Mear has the supporting ensemble on stage – high-kicking, flick-flacking and doing the splits, pairing massive wigs with facial hair and high heels with spangled phalluses.
Then, you get a sense of how startling the show was in 1983. It’s good to see it now when intolerance is yet again rampant. But it could have been better.
