La Cage aux Folles

Like its cross-dressing central character, Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein's groundbreaking musical is ageing. It blazed a politically defiant trail when it first appeared in 1983, coinciding with the rise of the Aids epidemic, but it now feels curiously conservative. As farce, it's as flat as 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. 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, 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. His Albin may be short on vulnerability, but Barrowman is what he is - take it and be grateful.