Dragging out a crowd-pleaser once again

BY LINDA WINER | STAFF WRITER

December 10, 2004

When "La Cage aux Folles" opened on Broadway in 1983, the musical adaptation of the hit French movie was about as threatening as "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" in bugle beads.

The show - which won six Tony Awards, including best musical - had a jokey, big-hearted book by Harvey Fierstein and enough repetitions of upbeat, sentimental songs by Jerry Herman, creator of the 1964 classic "Hello, Dolly!" to have named this one "Hello, Tootsie!"

So don't complain to this corner that the revival, which opened last night at the Marquis Theatre, is passé. With apologies to the show's famous anthem, it is what it is, and that is what it's always been: a middle-of-the-road, '60s crowd-pleaser in drag.

Yes, there is a sudden ugly pertinence in the story's archvillain: the leader of the Tradition, Family and Morality Party. Other than that, the corn's still as high as an elephant's feather boa in the St. Tropez transvestite cabaret owned by an aging male couple named Georges and Albin.

After the 1978 French film, its two sequels and the 1996 American movie version called "The Birdcage," what is there left to know?

Well, except for some tastefully outrageous costumes by William Ivey Long, Jerry Zaks' conventional production feels skimpy and rote.

The men do kiss at the end, which they did not do in 1983, but the morals police are not likely to shut the place down.

Daniel Davis has a twinkling, smooth dignity as Georges, whom he describes as the "plain" homosexual. Gary Beach, so outlandishly delicious in his Tony-winning portrayal of the flaming director in "The Producers," goes here for a more humane idea of the club's cross-dressing star - though, at times, he turns in a surprisingly familiar combination of Quentin Crisp and Nathan Lane.

Something is off when the most original character onstage is Jacob, the maid, played with wild-card abandon by Michael Benjamin Washington. Gavin Creel is merely competent as Jean-Michel, Georges' grown son, whom he and Albin have raised and adored.

As anyone who cares already knows, Jean-Michel has just become engaged to Anne (Angela Gaylor), the daughter of the morality party boss (Michael Mulheren). The son wants to hide Albin, who instead dresses up as Jean-Michel's matronly mother. Parents arrive, the press is called and alleged hilarity ensues.

Jerry Mitchell - beloved by Broadway for his choreography of "Hairspray" and "The Full Monty" - puts a meager contingent of beautiful chorines with low voices through the expected kick lines, can-cans and tap-dancing production numbers. Inexplicably, the drag queens are also tumbling gymnasts. Is there an Olympic category for that?

Herman, once a Broadway giant, has not had a new show in years. Here he brings back a few liftable songs, reprised until you cannot help but hum them. At least one song, "The Best of Times," is so unrelated to the story it needs a scene to set it up.

And, of course, there is "I Am What I Am," the showstopper that remains the gay contribution to the "I've Gotta Be Me"/"My Way" repertoire.

Scott Pask's sets - the cabaret, the apartment, a street near the sea - are fancifully functional but not especially inventive.

We wish more than the color pink could be described as shocking.

We also wish the orchestra were not hidden under the stage.

What's to hide?