Fierstein in 'La Cage': Laughs, not love

 When "La Cage aux Folles" opened around this time last spring, the intentionally, delightfully tacky production won Tony Awards for best musical revival, for best director (Terry Johnson) and best actor -- for Douglas Hodge's astonishing, multileveled performance as Albin, the aging butterfly of the San Tropez transvestite cabaret.

So it's replacement time in the life-cycle of a long run and, with new competition from guys in dresses at "Priscilla Queen of the Desert," decision-makers at "La Cage" came up with what seemed to be a brainstorm of an attention-getting device.

Why not cast Harvey Fierstein, Broadway's much-loved force of nature, as Albin? After all, he not only wrote the book for Jerry Herman's 1983 "La Cage" score, but won several of his many Tonys playing a young drag performer in his own "Torch Song Trilogy" and playing Edna Turnblad, huge-hearted mother of teen Tracy, in "Hairspray."

As "The Harvey Show," Fierstein is unpredictable and fun. The production feels looser and goofier now, and everyone works the audience more playfully in what's meant to be a down-and-dirty club. The male Cagelles still toy like gifted brats with the incongruities between big-muscle thuggery and ballet illusion.

But "La Cage" is also meant to be a love story, a deep longtime romance between Albin and Georges, the self-described "plain homosexual" with whom he runs the cabaret. Christopher Sieber (a late replacement after the abrupt departure of Jeffrey Tambor) makes a wonderful Georges -- tender and funny, with a stirring voice that delivers more of the music than Kelsey Grammer, for all his charm, even hinted at last spring.

Fierstein and Sieber have the rapport of good buddies. But there is no chemistry. Fierstein, whose femme side these days suggests Sophie Tucker as a trucker, blows the roof off the place with "I Am What I Am." You get the feeling he could do a dynamite "Rose's Turn" in "Gypsy."

For too much of the time, alas, he is playing for laughs instead of for keeps.