You’ll not find a play or musical with a clearer mantra than this: “I am what I am.”
The Arvada Center’s “La Cage aux Folles” is a garish, audacious and flamboyantly fun musical comedy, but its goal is so heartbreakingly humble: tolerance. The stakes here aren’t nearly as high as in its forebear, “Cabaret,” but their parallel pleas echo, from World War II Berlin, past the 1980s French Rivera, to Arvada today.
This is a smart, heartfelt old musical that doesn’t feel old, because we still haven’t quite gotten the message.
You know the story if you’ve seen “The Birdcage,” a 1973 play-turned-movie-turned-Broadway musical-turned-hit film starring Nathan Lane and Robin Williams. It’s about two aging, happily committed gay men living in St. Tropez.
They occupy traditional married roles … with a twist. The husband is Georges (Michael E. Gold), the emcee at a transvestite club starring “wife” Albin (Stephen Day). Their lives turn upside down when Georges’ son Jean-Michel, whom these two have raised, announces he’s marrying the daughter of France’s most conservative politico.
Jerry Herman’s stellar opening number is a visual party game, with “Les Cagelles” showgirls performing the gender-bending “We Are What We Are.” Our difficulty discerning which dancers are men and which are women is the entire point: It doesn’t matter … or, it shouldn’t.
Gold and Day show us the kind of couple anyone of any orientation should want to emulate: They’ve stayed together through times hard and happy, raised a son, soothed each other’s insecurities and tolerated each other’s idiosyncracies (and boy, does Albin have plenty).
Gold, a Denver-born Broadway vet, has been entertaining Arvada Center audiences for 26 years, but this must rank among his very best work. His Georges is a caring father, patient lover and pure showman — with a killer voice and steps. Day’s fully realized Albin is an emotional torrent. Despite the makeup, glitter, costumes and histrionics, these are two naked performances. When these codgers sing, “We’re young and in love,” they are.
Harvey Fierstein’s book is filled with subtle and astute commentaries, but it never hits you over the head. Note the least-suited of the four couples is the morals cop and his repressed wife. And much of the shame Georges and his untraditional family must work through turns out to be their own. This is the furthest thing from a polemic.
Most of the supporting characters are superb, led by Milton Craig Nealy as spikes-and-leather maid “Jah-cobe” (that’s “Horse” to those who remember him in “The Full Monty”); Zina Mercil returns to a Denver stage for the first time since a memorable turn in the Country Dinner Playhouse’s “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” a few years back (and again with a rope in her hand!). Here she’s rough and naughty showgirl Hannah; Rob Reynolds is terrific as her progressively more black-and-blue fiancee.
It’s also quite moving to see veteran Mark Rubald playing the uptight conservative opposite his real-life former wife Heather Fortin Rubald, who is simply glorious as a woman shedding her inhibitions.
The only casting disconnect is Nick Spangler, who makes for a comparatively cardboard Jean-Michel, opposite the warm and wonderful Rachel Turner as bride-to-be Ann. He’s a handsome guy with a terrific voice, but one day last week, he was dropping lines and even entrances. Spangler reveals no real recognition or conflict over the position he’s put his parents in, or much substance of character or remorse — until his moving final line.
Kitty Skillman Hilsabeck’s ever-inventive choreography ranks among her best — and most unforgiving — work. Her outstanding showboys and girls are put to the supreme test, and they triumph (hoofing on heels!). Nicole M. Harrison’s extravagant and hilarious costume design starts out mostly black and white and subtly shifts to full color — and isn’t that what this show is all about? How often do you see costumes that further the style and the theme at once?
“La Cage” is the kind of big musical spectacle the Arvada Center typically stages in the summer. After the performance, I was asked point blank, “What was (director) Rod Lansberry thinking, scheduling a musical about gays at the holidays?” Lansberry could not have picked a tougher holiday sell. “La Cage” is no “Children of Eden,” to be sure. Or even “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”
Then again, maybe it is. Is there a right or a wrong season to ask people to simply open up your hearts and try to understand what you don’t yet understand?
At the start of the performance I saw, pins were dropping – and I could hear every one. By the end, this ensemble had won over a tough audience that was standing and cheering.
And why not? This is theater that’s at once eye-opening — and eye-popping.
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“La Cage aux Folles”
Titillation and tolerance. Presented by the Arvada Center, 6901 Wadsworth Blvd. Written by Harvey Fierstein and Jerry Herman. Directed by Rod Lansberry. Starring Michael E. Gold, Stephen Day and Nick Spangler. Through Dec. 23. 2 hours, 30 minutes. 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays- Saturdays, 1 p.m. Wednesdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays. $38-$48. 720-898-7200 or .
