Paul Capsis and Michael Cormick as Albin and Georges. Photo: John McRae
The story behind the musical of La Cage aux Folles, derived from Jean Poiret’s 1973 French play, is that family should stick together, no matter what. Simple enough, except that the family in question is a gay couple – Georges (Michael Cormick), manager of a nightclub featuring drag acts, and Albin (Paul Capsis), the flamboyant star of his show – and their adult straight son Jean-Michel (Noah Mullins), the result of a one-night stand between Georges and a woman he would prefer to forget and who has no interest in her boy. Jean-Michel’s birth mother is referenced in the show, but makes no appearance.
Also part of the household is the wonderfully petulant ‘butler’ Jacob (Anthony Brandon Wong), who cooks, cleans and dusts under sufferance, while he waits to be discovered.
The show opens with performances by George and the Cagelles and the number ‘We Are What We Are.’ It’s a rousing start, full of wigs, glitter and high kicks. We’re introduced to the sparring but happy dynamics of Georges and Albin’s relationship, but then the trouble starts.
Jean-Michel is in love with Anne Dindon (Chloe Malek), who is the daughter of the ultraconservative politician of the day, to whom homosexuality is anathema. Could Albin make himself scarce or pretend he is Jean-Michel’s uncle – not the person who has mothered him since babyhood?
Unsurprisingly, recriminations flow along with farcical scenes.
All this is established in Act 1, which also gives us two of the best numbers in La Cage – ‘With Anne On My Arm’ (Jean-Michel and Georges) and ‘With You On My Arm’ (Albin and Georges). Both showcase the remarkable voices of Mullins, Cormick and Capsis and are well delivered.
The second act – where we meet the despised Eduoard Dindon (ably played by Peter Phelps) and his wife Marie (Zoe Ventura) – lacks the pace and substance of the first. The casting throughout this show is outstanding, but Edouard and Marie are two-dimensional characters, as is Anne. Malek plays her for laughs (and does so with aplomb) but Anne is a tad vacuous. Jean-Michel comes over as selfish and/or an idiot (yes, I know he’s in love).
There’s a lot to like in La Cage, with its celebration of family and diversity, but fifty years on from the play’s debut, its shock value has subsided somewhat. The musical numbers (book by Harvey Fierstein; music and lyrics by Jerry Herman) remain strong, especially Act 2’s ‘Look Over There’ and ‘The Best of Times’. Sadly, though, the sound on opening night was often erratic, and detracted from the performances. No doubt those problems have been fixed now.
The showgirls are fun and the costumes by Jozef Koda are a treat. Plenty of pink feathers , too, for the Cagelles and they are put to superb use in what I can only describe as the ‘flamingo dance’. A fabulously memorable routine. And all credit to Veronica Beattie George, whose choreography on what is a small stage for a musical works very well.
Grace Deacon’s set design is modest, perhaps because the show runs only for six performances, but a ritzy curtain here and there, behind which the excellent band is sometimes silhouetted, is enough to show us (along with Phoebe Pilcher’s lighting) that we’re in a nightclub.
It’s 40 years since the musical of La Cage premiered on Broadway and broke barriers about gay representation by becoming the first hit musical centred on a homosexual relationship. Its themes and values still resonate; it remains a show about individual and collective freedom, but I feel it is becoming one for nostalgics. That said, this production, directed by Riley Spadoro, will make you smile, too. And that can be no bad thing.
At the State Theatre Sydney, until 23 April
Tickets from $49.95; ticketmaster.com.au or 1300 139 588
