BORNSTEIN: Not the same old song and dance

Male chorus line among the many delights of 'La Cage'

By Lisa Bornstein, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published December 7, 2007 at 12:05 a.m.

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Photo by Special to the News /

Stephen Day, left, and Michael Gold play the lead roles in La Cage.

I can't decide whether it's wonderful or tragic that 20 years after its Broadway debut, La Cage aux Folles still packs an emotional punch.

Certainly it presents a narrow view of homosexuality, confining it to a drag club on the Riviera filled with preening men approximating a cartoon of femininity. It's got a Boys in the Band whiff of the stale, but like that play, the musical today reminds us of how glacial progress can be.

Based on the hit French film, the musical - with Jerry Herman's music and lyrics and Harvey Fierstein's book - depicts the love between Georges, the dignified owner-emcee of a drag club, and his partner, Albin, the star performer and an individual who has carved out a space of his own between the masculine and the feminine. Their domestic routine is upset when their newly engaged son, Jean-Michel, asks Albin to disappear rather than offend his fiancee's conservative parents.

Has any mother not felt the pain of a child's shame? It's excruciating to watch Jean-Michel reject the loving Albin, and even more awful to see Georges betray his "wife."

Rod A. Lansberry directs the Arvada Center production with a respect for the story underlying the song-and-dance numbers. Michael Gold glides through the production as a debonair, effervescent host and solid family man who amusedly dotes on his wife when not revealing graceful, smooth moves on the dance floor. He exudes a decency in the role that makes his betrayal and eventual return more palatable.

At the show's open, Stephen Day's Albin appears to be a camp caricature, a demanding diva and a hausfrau in size-13 shoes. Albin is the star of his own Mildred Pierce. He becomes something else, though, as the play progresses: a human being. He makes Albin sensitive, flamboyant, adorned - and right about everything. He's a mother and a wife, pronouns be damned, and when he sings I Am What I Am, it's an act-closer that eschews spectacle for a moment of searing individualism.

Albin and Georges are surrounded by friends, family and neither. Milton Craig Nealy amuses as the demanding butler/wannabe maid Jacob. Sharon Kay White makes a magnetic club owner with a fierce independence.

Other than the story and Fierstein's sharp dialogue, the appeal of La Cage Aux Folles comes from the sight of a predominantly male chorus line in heels and outrageous costumes (built with dazzle by Nicole M. Harrison). Kitty Skillman Hilsabeck has created some of her most interesting and creative choreography here in a wide range of numbers that combine the Folies Bergere with Busby Berkley. But, probably stemming from Arvada's famously short rehearsal periods, the chorus lacks the synchronization that would make the show a true eye-popper.

La Cage aux Folles

* Grade: B+

* When and where: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, 1 p.m. Wednesdays, through Dec. 23, Arvada Center, 6901 Wadsworth Blvd.

* Cost: $38 to $48

* Information: 720-898- 7200

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