LA CAGE AUX FOLLES
Menier Chocolate Factory, London SE1
Opened 9 January, 2008
****
The Chocolate Factory had doubtless been
hoping for a clutch of strong reviews of this staging of Jerry Herman’s
musical to boost their business over the holiday season; unfortunately,
illness led to the press night being twice postponed. I think that
decision was, artistically at least, the right one. The show does not
stand or fall solely on the performance of no-longer-poorly Douglas
Hodge, but no understudy would have given the same flavour. Drag is an
idiosyncratic art, and more so in this comedy in which the ploy is
reversed. Here, a flamboyant drag artiste has first to learn to behave
like a heterosexual man and then successfully to impersonate a woman
(very different from the ambiguity of drag), for the benefit of his
“son”’s strait-laced in-laws-to-be.
Hodge at first struck me as too much the mincing, wispily voiced
stereotype. But as the evening progressed, I saw greater complexity,
just as in the concept of drag itself. There are also moments at which
he makes the role his own, such as when, during his “straight”
training, he irresistibly fans himself with a slice of toast. Having
been underwhelmed by his goofy Nathan Detroit in Guys And Dolls a couple of years
ago, I am now happy to revise my opinion of Hodge as a musical comedian.
The show itself – both Herman’s numbers and Harvey Fierstein’s book
(from Jean Poiret’s original play) – proves surprisingly affecting, and
most so when it is least labouring the point. Neither the drag chorus’s
defiant “We Are What We Are” nor even the big, calculatedly sentimental
number “The Best Of Times” strike as powerfully as moments when we see
the simple truth that these two middle-aged men cannot but be deeply in
love with each other. Philip Quast as Georges, the “plain homosexual”
partner to Hodge’s Albin, is a perfect complement; it is his grounding
that permits and delimits Albin’s diva antics. The poignancy takes care
of itself, and director Terry Johnson has a deft eye for the farcical
side of things. It is always a joy to see Jason Pennycooke, who
regularly steals scenes as the couple’s butler-cum-“maid”. But for me, the biggest
surprise of the evening was to see how, when dressed soberly en femme as “Maman”, Hodge
strikingly resembled Carol Thatcher.
Written for the Financial
Times.
Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights
reserved.
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