When it was announced there would be another revival of LA CAGE I heard a groan from everyone I knew. This production was coming from a celebrated London production to feature the London star, Douglas Hodge as Albin and paired with Kelsey Grammer as Georges. It just seemed too soon and very unnecessary to have LA CAGE back, but low and behold the reviews were valentines and to everyone’s surprise the show was stamped a hit. A lot of people like to go around saying that the last LA CAGE was bad, but it really wasn’t. Somehow, though it was big and splashy, had an excellent cast and fantastic staging of the musical numbers, the show didn’t hit the way it had originally in 1983. Even with its still topical subject matter, the show actually seemed a little old fashioned and the book seemed to be structurally choppy. All of a sudden now, in 2010, with half the musicians in the orchestra and a modestly sized production, LA CAGE emerges as perfection. The show has some strange things about it, which one could easily call flaws, but in the hands of a wise director like Terry Johnson, the bumps are smoothed out and the show just works like gangbusters.
Douglas Hodge is known as the award winning Shakespearian actor of London’s Royal Shakespeare Company. He gives a weird performance here, though completely intriguing. He does not have the big baritone voice of George Hearn (which when you think about it seems completely inappropriate for the character), but he is rich with ingenious bits of comedy. He is campy and mugs in a way that only Albin can get away with and somehow the director has not only allowed this, but guided the production so that the old-fashioned play it to the audience shtick worked with a blending of what needed to be real honest acting in order for us to feel for the characters when it was important to do so. His singing of the title song included impressions of Marilyn Monroe, Edith Piaf and Marlene Dietrich. Hodge had done his research and he was simply brilliant as an old time female impersonator who could really entertain a cabaret audience. His “I Am What I Am” was a triumph. Part of this is also simply the song––the perfect song at the perfect moment expressing the feelings of the character with bravado right at the end of the act. It is one of the greatest ends of a first act in musicals.
Kelsey Grammer couldn’t be more suited to his role. He has just the right demeanor, is greeted warmly by the audience when he first appears and leads the production as not only a gracious star, but a very good singing actor who makes the most out of both his comedy scenes and his emotional moments. His “Look Over There” is particularly moving.
A.J. Shively makes his Broadway debut at the son, Jean-Michel, and he is hands down the finest Sean-Michel I have ever seen. He is youthful, has a charming singing voice, dances with grace and is able to make what can be a hateful character into a sympathetic, though misguided youth. The moment when he apologizes to his parents for his great disrespect after all they have done for him caused me a small tear and a surprising round of applause from the audience. The thing about this production is that the audience is rooting for these characters––there is the feeling of an investment in their welfare. This was not the case in the last production. Maybe because this production isn’t so big and Los Vegas, but maybe the smaller Longacre Theater and the scaled down production makes the characters all the more human and less cartoony, as broad as they are.
Formerly, Jacob has been played by a black actor, but here it is the Hispanic Robin De Jesús, fresh from IN THE HEIGHTS. Elena Shaddow, who had burst forth as the title character in the City Center Encores production of FANNY with a stunning singing voice didn’t get to sing a solo word as Anne, but she was lovely and danced well in her dream appearance during “Anne on My Arm.” Fred Applegate and Veanne Cox played Anne’s conservative parents, wringing every comic possibility out of them as well as slyly doubling as the cafe owners earlier in the show.
The only real change to the material past the smaller orchestration was the elimination of the musicalized Promenade scene. The lyrics were spoken with the tune underneath. This is the only piece of music that never sounds like the rest of the score, but it did sound like France to me and I wish it was left in as a song. Matthew Wright’s costumes were glitzy, colorful and sometimes inventive, though the overall design was simplified from what we’ve seen in the past. Although Tim Shortall’s set design was modest, it did everything it needed to do and unlike the last revival, was unlikely to break down. I am a big fan of this show because it came along when I was a teenager and it spoke to me in a way no show had done prior to that point. I have seen it on tour, in regional theaters, dinner theaters and Broadway. This smaller LA CAGE was cute, but it was also potent and perhaps the most effective production of the show I have ever seen.
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