This cockle-warming camp classic begins with a flourish. You brush through a corridor of red velveteen swag, and seat yourself on a steep rake fronted by a couple of nightclub-style tables. The mood is witty. The lights are pretty (and, naturellement, pink). And the brass and piano overture is nostalgic perfection. Girlish shadows dance behind the curtain. ‘We are what we are,’ they whisper. ‘And what we are is an illusion!’ Sure enough, the curtains roll back, and our leggy lovelies lean backwards, showing off Linford Christie-sized lunchboxes beneath their spangly frocks.
Terry Johnson’s production almost teeters over when it leans towards the sadder, seedier side of being trapped in a body that doesn’t fit. ‘La Cage…’ is essentially a sweet-natured, middle-aged love story between two gay dads (Albin and Georges) who run a club in St Tropez. There is a series of comical calamities (when their son asks them to play it straight for a night to hoodwink his right-wing in-laws-to-be). But the showstoppers stop short at tassel-shaking affirmation and true manly tenderness, and Johnson’s production too often makes this taffeta stuff feel a bit jaded. In Act 1, the dressing-room scenes are crammed awkwardly onto the side of the stage; some of the lines are funnier digested than delivered; and the energy between Philip Quast as Georges and Douglas Hodge as his transvestite husband Albin/Zaza is a tad listless and over-sophisticated. But it leaves them plenty of room to rise delicately in their romantic numbers, and more spiritedly in the farcical climax. Finally, tunes and talent win out. And the wittily detailed choreography, and the manful talent of the dancers in suggesting a whole chorus line on a stage which looks too small for them, also make this a treat, if ‘La Cage…’ is up your street.
