James Daly, as Jean-Michel, centre, and Chris Vergara, as Jacob, right, dance in a scene with Sean Arbuckle, as Georges, in La Cage aux Folles at the Stratford Festival.David Hou/Stratford Festival
- Title: La Cage aux Folles
- Book by: Harvey Fierstein
- Music and lyrics: Jerry Herman
- Director: Thom Allison
- Actors: Sean Arbuckle, Steve Ross
- Company: The Stratford Festival
- Venue: Avon Theatre
- City: Stratford, Ont.
- Year: Runs to Oct. 26
If you’re looking for a feel-good show for the whole family this summer, La Cage aux Folles is just the ticket in terms of what’s opened so far at the Stratford Festival.
This 1983 musical, receiving a warm-hearted and welcoming production from director Thom Allison at the Avon Theatre, concerns a middle-aged couple with a grown-up son who wants to marry into a family with values different from their own.
It’s a sweet tear-jerker – with fun, farcical elements – about the importance of the old commandment to honour thy father and thy mother.
Because the parents in question are Georges (Sean Arbuckle), who runs a drag club in Saint-Tropez, and Albin (Steve Ross), who performs as its star, Zaza, this sentimental show with its earworm score by Jerry Herman has not always been classified as one to which you might bring the kids.
Forty-one years after it premiered on Broadway, however, we’re living in a very different time in Canada – one in which not only are queer couples with children unexceptional, but the once outré art form of drag has gone firmly mainstream and all-ages in certain cases.
Of course, there is some loud opposition to this, especially but not only south of the border. In the big city where I live, however, the big controversy last year at my kid’s school board was over sending out parental permission slips ahead of drag-queen story time – with a campaign successfully leading to their elimination.
Steve Ross as Albin playing Zaza, left, and Starr Domingue as Jacqueline perform with members of the company in La Cage aux Folles.David Hou/Stratford Festival
This contemporary context influences the reception of La Cage aux Folles, in which Georges and Albin’s son, Jean-Michel (James Daly), returns from a trip engaged to a young woman named Anne (Heather Kosik).
The complication is that Anne’s father is a conservative politician running on an “anti-transvestite” platform (Juan Chioran, doing double duty on the disapproving dad front this season, playing a literally Puritanical one in Something Rotten! too).
And so, Jean-Michel asks Georges, his biological father, if he might invite Sybil, his bio-mom, over for a meet-the-inlaws dinner – and keep Albin, who has raised him since he was four, away.
The first act tracks the emotional impact of Jean-Michel’s cruel groomzilla ask on Albin, while the second shifts to satire and the famous farcical set-piece where Albin does come to the dinner in unexpected form.
As Georges, Arbuckle is the standout in Stratford’s new production, delivering one of the most swooningly romantic performances I’ve ever seen at the theatre company. His ode to Albin and aging alongside a lover, Song on the Sand, was delivered with tremendous emotion. His love for Jean-Michel, too, is palpable – as is the wrenching shame he feels over his betrayal of his partner (and himself) for that love.
Long-time Stratford clown Ross, meanwhile, is given an opportunity to stretch himself in the other dual, lead role.
His Zaza is a pageant queen – decked out in regal outfits designed by David Boechler that nod at Marlene Dietrich and Mae West – whose crowd-drawing talent is an impressive baritone singing voice. His Albin, meanwhile, is an impetuous but loving family person.
Ross, now in his 21st season, is very good at creating caricatures with soul in comic roles, but he restrains himself here in the shtick department, avoiding stereotypes, sometimes to the point of muting the queer comedy of the role.
At times I felt his performance felt a bit closed off – that he was not letting Albin’s vulnerability show quite enough. Georges would send him the most powerful rays of adoration, only to have them sometimes just seem to bounce off him.
In the supporting cast, Chris Vergara gives the most enjoyably comic performance as Jacob, Georges and Albin’s manic live-in “maid,” who here, as in the 2011-12 North American tour, has been reimagined as Filipino.
La Cage aux Folles also features lots of onstage and backstage scenes at the titular cabaret featuring Les Cagelles. This six-person ensemble introduce themselves in song: “Look under our glitz: Muscles and tits / Proving we are what we are.”
Cameron Carver’s choreography, indeed, emphasizes muscly athleticism – with the occasional bit of camp thrown in, such as a tap dance in swim flippers.
In another number, Les Cagelles strut around like animals escaped from the zoo; they seem like fairly tame ones. Indeed, I found no more crudeness in this production than in Something’s Rotten!, which has a whole song about premature ejaculation, or in Romeo and Juliet, which, trigger warning, has a sex scene involving teens.
While I was moved by Stratford’s Cage, I must admit I wouldn’t have minded a little more guts amid the glitter.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this review said the character of Jacob was depicted as Filipino in the 2010 Broadway revival of La Cage Aux Folles. Jacob was depicted as Filipino for the 2011 tour based on that Broadway revival.