La Cage Aux Folles at Ally Rep

Or: What Legend has Told and what Rumor has Promised

Enfolded in the glowing lights of the Rivera (courtesy of Chaz Gentry) pumped and plumped by a swaying orchestra, spangled and sequined; La Cage Aux Folles, both the eponymous nightclub and the musical, offer a chance to bring unbridle joy into a dangerous and tempestuous world. The ladies of the house, a sensuous and athletic lot, apt to shimmy up polls or drop into a perfect (or not so perfect) split, are eager to entertain us in a variety of costumes and a chorus of beguilement. It is a place that brings a smile to the face as soon as the great peacock panels are lit. As soon as the girls start in one is apt to find ones head darting side to side in time with, “We. Are What We Are. And What We Are. Is An Illusion.”

But all is not well in fabulous gay paradise. Club owner Georges (Jodi Eichelberger) and his headliner the fabulous Zaza, off stage, Albin (MissFyre)* have been drifting further and further apart. The crux arrises when Georges’s son Jean-Michel (Austin Murray) arrives with the news he has fallen in love with a woman, of all things. Worse yet, the father of his betrothed is a homophobic, ultra conservative politician Deputy Dindon (Steven Lanzet). While Anne (Athena Watkins) herself seems a good egg, Jean-Michel is desperate to impress her father by clothing his own family in bourgeois respectability and whitewashing everything offensive including painting the fabulous Queen who has raised him for twenty years.

The star at the center of this spangled galaxy MissFyre melts and fountains from tragedy to triumph. With a voice of watered crystal she pops and flutters about the stage. The famed Anthem of “I Am What I Am” and “The Best of Times” are carried off beautifully. Even if the lyrics all ‘round the hall are difficult to pin, and tend to double back on themselves in any case, the chance to listen to such a ripe and elegant voice is a treat. Still, the filament that lights the musical is not, oddly enough, the numbers but the whit bantered back between Albin and Georges, and Albin gets all the best zingers. But the wry asides, the rattle of a pea in a saucepan is where Eichelberger excels. His Georges is as dry and crisp and satisfying as a perfect slice of toast and that is slathered in a zesty marmalade, tangy and sweet. His energy as tries to teach Albin to “pass” or builds a series of absurdities for Anne and her family like a house of cards, is utterly unflappable. At one point in tonight's performance, spun about in a flurry of his husband’s departure Eichelberger sat muttering ”Well that’s a surprise,” and promptly fell gauntlet over greaves out of his seat. Sprawled on the floor, a few “oophs” of sympathy and concern from the audience hovering in the air, he turned his head to us. “That was a surprise, too.”

There is also the antics of Jacob (Alaggio Farino**) Albin’s scheming maid/butler/butmostlymaid who scuttles around the stage in a fabulously coordinated example of pratfalls, buffoonery, moues, aside glances, and barbed throw-aways. He also sings extremely well. And there are the genuine talents of the queens themselves from Chantel (Taylor Hawker’s) high C and low G-String, to Mercedes (Carly Giacinto) pole dance, to the professional playfulness of Hannah (Enzo Benzo**) and Phaedra (Frida Nightz**) sets.

But for all the bared flesh, the erotic art (on stage and around the hall), and general sauciness La Cage is, what I would call at least a deeply moral play. It shows a community sticking up for each other (the queens and patrons of La Cage lovingly attendant and fiercely loyal to their founding couple). It shows odious figures changed to more respecting creatures by the replacing the scales over their eyes with sequins. It shows that selfish and fearful wishes lead only to harm, and that family, whoever might make it up, is paramount. And it is based not on the violent passions of young lust (though Watkins and Murray do get some nice dances in) but on a tested, and touching, and ultimately true love between two men who understand each other utterly and find their affections, far from smoldering, rekindled.

So La Cage, far from a place of confinement, is instead a place of joy, of revelry. A show to take your loved ones, or a place to sit alone and feel surrounded by all kinds of new friends.

*Note: The reviewer, uninitiated in the finer points of drag culture has opted to refer to professional queens by their stage names and attendant pronouns in reporting of the production. If the practice is inaccurate he asks the pardon of any offended parties and begs that whatever wig he may have be left unsnatched.

**Contender for the Aven Tavishell Nifity Name Award 2019.