OK, I’ve been a bit of a culture vulture this week, but I never thought that Friday would mean being confined to a birdcage…
We had ring-side seats at the Playhouse Theatre for a performance of the acclaimed musical, La Cage Aux Folles, and boy were we close – we sat at one of four cabaret tables pushed right up against the stage at the front of the stalls…
In this revival of the 1983 show, Graham Norton really puts his heart into playing ‘Albin’, the aging and neurotic’ leading lady’ of the Cage Aux Folles cabaret club, with the equally excellent Stephen Pacey starring as Albin’s long-suffering lover and business partner, Georges (and I still remember him from Blakes 7!). Although this musical, by Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein, doesn’t have a whole string of catchy songs like some of the other shows in the West End – Oliver being a good example – what it misses out on in memorable tunes it makes up for with raw emotion. Given the straightforward way that the musical deals with prejudice and hatred, to my mind many of the scenes were genuinely moving, and I had tears in my eyes at times
Mind you, those tears were sometimes caused by the sight of Graham Norton’s outrageous frocks and the incredibly gaudy outfits worn by the ‘boys dressed as girls’ dancers, and thats when they weren’t leaping on and off our cabaret table. What a performance!