Review: “La Cage Aux Folles” at Barrington Stage Company
The company’s production earns the rave reviews it got when it opened on Broadway.
Barrington Stage Company’s sparkling production of “La Cage Aux Folles” is summer camp at its best. The breakthrough 1983 musical, with a book by Harvey Fierstein and music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, is set at a nightclub on the French Riviera famous for its drag shows. Georges and Albin, a deeply in love middle-aged gay couple, live upstairs from the nightclub where Georges is the master of ceremonies and Albin is the headlining diva known as ZaZa. When Georges’s twentysomething son — whom he and Albin have raised together — returns home and announces he’s getting married to a conservative politician’s daughter, he asks his father for the unthinkable: to pretend he’s straight and to not allow Albin to meet his fiancée’s parents when they come to visit. When the couple don straight male drag to meet the future in-laws, hilarity ensues — but heartbreak, too.
When “La Cage” opened to rave reviews on Broadway in 1983 (it ran for four years), New York Times critic Frank Rich described it as the “first Broadway musical ever to give center stage to a homosexual love affair.” He also described the nightclub’s performers as “transvestite dancing girls,” a phrase from the days before the reality-TV show “Ru Paul’s Drag Race” helped make drag mainstream.
In a stroke of genius, director Mike Donahue cast a contestant from Ru Paul’s Drag Race, Alex Michaels (whose nom de plume is Alexis Michelle) as Albin/ZaZa. Michaels is bedazzling, bewitching, and especially magnificent in the show’s second song, “A Little More Mascara.” Sitting at a dressing table facing the audience as she begins to do her maquillage and her transformation from Albin to ZaZa, Michaels sings “Once again it is time to be someone/Who’s anyone but me.” And as she applies more makeup, you understand how much it means to be ZaZa when she sings, “And I can cope again!/ Good God! There’s hope again!” A knockout delivering a knockout.
Michaels' star-turn is matched by Tom Story as Georges, who could not be more in love with Albin—they click with snap, crackle, pop, and passion. But Georges reluctantly accedes to his son’s request to hide (albeit unsuccessfully) his homosexuality and the love of his life.
The gender-bending showgirls — who sing of having “a little guts and lots of glitter” — are ravishing and mesmerizing in their ebullient numbers choreographed with aplomb by Paul McGill. They open the show and set its tone with the gay anthem, “We Are What We Are,” but it’s ZaZa’s poignant version that closes Act One, “I Am What I Am,” which makes the more indelible impression.
“La Cage Aux Folles” is an old-fashioned, feel-good musical with a bouncy score in the spirit of Herman’s other hit shows, “Hello, Dolly!” and “Mame.” Above all else, it is sheer entertainment with a couple of hummable tunes like the “The Best of Times.” And that’s a perfect aperçu for the show. Indeed, watching “La Cage Aux Folles” at Barrington Stage is the best of times!
"La Cage Aux Folles" runs at Barrington Stage Company through July 6.
