La Cage aux Folles

Like its central character, Jerry Herman, Harvey Fierstein's groundbreaking musical is ageing badly. It may have blazed a politically defiant trail when it first appeared in 1983, coinciding with the rise of the Aids epidemic, but it now feels old-fashioned and even curiously conservative. As farce, it's as flat as cross-dressing chanteuse Albin's chest before he pops in his falsies, a flaw that Terry Johnson's long-running production conceals behind a barrage of glitz and attitudinous shimmying. As for its aggressively essentialist philosophy, defined by the classic disco anthem 'I Am What I Am', the picture is complicated slightly when Albin sings in 'Mascara' that he is trying to be 'someone who's anyone other than me', but the exploration of identity doesn't really probe any deeper. If you've been raised on Almodóvar, this won't satisfy you.

What makes the show still worth catching is the addition of John Barrowman to the cast. True, he's probably too young and glamorous for the role of fading diva Albin (those pecs! Those teeth!), and he certainly doesn't go cap in hand to the audience for sympathy - which some might argue is Albin's whole raison d'être. But after Douglas Hodge, Graham Norton and Roger Allam, Barrowman's is an Albin who can really sing - the head-spinning sequence at the end of the first act leaves you in no doubt why the character is supposed to be such a celebrated performer. His Albin may be short on vulnerability, but Barrowman is what he is - take it and be grateful.