#1
Posted: 4/18/10 at 12:19pm
and s so does Mr Hodge!
'La Cage' is gonna slay 'em!
'A Man of Pinter ... Sings in a Wig'
By Patrick Healy
At a rehearsal of the Broadway musical “La Cage aux Folles” this month the British actor Douglas Hodge paused during the number 'The Best of Times' to hash out a detail with the director, Terry Johnson.
Mr. Hodge asked if he could improvise where to sit on the lip of the stage as he banters with the audience midway through the song. 'There will be people who are too embarrassed to talk back to me', Mr. Hodge explained. Mr. Johnson said he trusted the actor to choose his spot; nodding, Mr. Hodge began silently conversing with invisible theatergoers, feigning delight at their imagined responses.
Technical precision can easily be overshadowed in the colorful performances of 'La Cage', especially for actors in Mr. Hodge’s role of the drag diva Albin, who performs under the stage name Zaza and who, in Act II, dons a skirt and pearls to become another character’s mother. But Mr. Hodge, a classically trained actor who is best known in British theater as a collaborator of the Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter, is aiming for a performance that is more than boas, belting and bravura outbursts. It is that sort of performance that the show’s Broadway producers are hoping will separate this 'Cage' from the previous New York incarnations, as well
as from the well known 1996 film adaptation, 'The Birdcage', in which Nathan Lane played the Albin character, called Albert.
'This character is needy in the extreme, full of terribly complex emotions and impulses, as Albin, as Zaza, as Mother', Mr. Hodge said in an interview after he arrived in New York in March. '‘La Cage’ is not a Pinter play, but Albin shares the desperation and yearning of big Pinter characters. That’s what I want to bring out here'.
While the television star Kelsey Grammer (“Frasier”) is the box office draw of this 'Cage', playing the drag club owner and Albin’s longtime lover, Georges.
Mr. Hodge, 50, is the principal reason why 'La Cage' is returning in unusually quick time after the last Broadway production, which won the 2005 Tony Award for best musical revival. He played Albin in the recent London production, beginning in 2008 at the Menier Chocolate Factory. The producers of this 'Cage' wanted the show in New York but not without Mr. Hodge, who won the Olivier Award -London’s Tony- for best actor in a musical last year. A few years earlier he showed his musical theater chops opposite Jane Krakowski in a well regarded London production of 'Guys and Dolls'.
'It would have been sacrilege to do it on Broadway without Doug', said David Babani, a lead producer and the Menier’s artistic director. 'With Doug’s Albin you get 10 performances for the price of one, because he has the deep theatrical training and classical skills to attack the layers of this character. 'It’s a mixture of straight pathos, a little bit of clowning and beautiful musical theater showmanship'.
Harvey Fierstein, the actor and writer who created the book for 'La Cage,' with music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, said that among the Albins he has seen, Mr. Hodge has created the most authentic drag queen. 'Their faces and posture out of drag reflect their tough, exhausting existences, but then they become these lovely, funny, sexy people once they go onstage', Mr. Fierstein said. 'Doug’s Albin has a Cockney accent and cooks in the kitchen wearing rubber gloves and smoking a cigarette. Not glamorous, just right'.
Mr. Hodge suspects that he gained an intuitive understanding for drag performance during his early years in show business. The son of a civil-service worker and a nurse, Mr. Hodge had a knack for impersonations as a boy, and at 16 he won a competition at a pub near his village, Wigmore, in southeast England, that put him on a touring circuit performing at NATO bases in the 1970s. 'For a time I really
thought acting was just impersonating,” he recalled. 'But impersonation is just big brush strokes, really. What makes acting different is empathy'.
His first experience with traditional theater came when he performed a speech from Pinter’s play “The Caretaker” to win admission to the National Youth Theater, which eventually led him to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He came to notice in Britain in the late 1980s for his leading roles in television series like 'Capital City', then took parts in 'several movies that were total flops and left me wondering what I was doing with my career'.
That changed in 1993, Mr. Hodge said, when the director David Leveaux cast him as the bodyguard Foster in Pinter’s 'No Man’s Land', in which Pinter himself starred as the alcoholic intellectual, Hirst.
'Harold and I became great friends, and the truth is he became a second father to me,', said Mr. Hodge, who went on to act in or direct the Pinter plays 'Moonlight', 'Betrayal' and 'The Caretaker'.
'He was someone I could talk to and confide in very easily', Mr. Hodge added. 'And I felt I was very like him. I just didn’t have his genius'.
Pinteresque qualities in Mr. Hodge’s Albin, according to Mr. Grammer, are the beats and pauses in some of his dialogue and the way he fits into an ensemble. 'He understands about tossing the ball to another actor, so to speak, and the way that actors can play off each other and energize each other', Mr. Grammer said.
Mr. Johnson, the 'Cage' director, said that he saw 'Pinter’s deep intelligence, lack of affect and rigorous craftsmanship in Doug', qualities that he believes are part of his Albin. 'In musicals I don’t think you have actors analyzing each moment, almost using a Stanislavskian analysis, which Doug does as he turns from Albin into
Zaza, or from Mother into Albin, or in the way he punches through certain words in ‘I Am What I Am,’ 'Zaza’s Act I closer, a sung through crescendo of survival.
Mr. Hodge said that he wanted to avoid caricature in his performance of Albin. The father of two children with his companion, the actress Tessa Peake-Jones, Mr. Hodge had not spent time in drag bars or with drag queens until he began doing research for the role. He recalled standing sheepishly at one drag bar in Birmingham at 3 a.m., sipping pints amid seven foot tall drag queens whose cleavage came up to his face. 'I spent a few nights with those women and learned a good deal about how very hard their lives were, as women and as men', Mr. Hodge said. 'I saw a lot of Albin and Zaza there. And I was determined that no one would see my Albin as any sort of parody, but as a very real, complicated human being'.
'La Cage' is gonna slay 'em!
'A Man of Pinter ... Sings in a Wig'
By Patrick Healy
At a rehearsal of the Broadway musical “La Cage aux Folles” this month the British actor Douglas Hodge paused during the number 'The Best of Times' to hash out a detail with the director, Terry Johnson.
Mr. Hodge asked if he could improvise where to sit on the lip of the stage as he banters with the audience midway through the song. 'There will be people who are too embarrassed to talk back to me', Mr. Hodge explained. Mr. Johnson said he trusted the actor to choose his spot; nodding, Mr. Hodge began silently conversing with invisible theatergoers, feigning delight at their imagined responses.
Technical precision can easily be overshadowed in the colorful performances of 'La Cage', especially for actors in Mr. Hodge’s role of the drag diva Albin, who performs under the stage name Zaza and who, in Act II, dons a skirt and pearls to become another character’s mother. But Mr. Hodge, a classically trained actor who is best known in British theater as a collaborator of the Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter, is aiming for a performance that is more than boas, belting and bravura outbursts. It is that sort of performance that the show’s Broadway producers are hoping will separate this 'Cage' from the previous New York incarnations, as well
as from the well known 1996 film adaptation, 'The Birdcage', in which Nathan Lane played the Albin character, called Albert.
'This character is needy in the extreme, full of terribly complex emotions and impulses, as Albin, as Zaza, as Mother', Mr. Hodge said in an interview after he arrived in New York in March. '‘La Cage’ is not a Pinter play, but Albin shares the desperation and yearning of big Pinter characters. That’s what I want to bring out here'.
While the television star Kelsey Grammer (“Frasier”) is the box office draw of this 'Cage', playing the drag club owner and Albin’s longtime lover, Georges.
Mr. Hodge, 50, is the principal reason why 'La Cage' is returning in unusually quick time after the last Broadway production, which won the 2005 Tony Award for best musical revival. He played Albin in the recent London production, beginning in 2008 at the Menier Chocolate Factory. The producers of this 'Cage' wanted the show in New York but not without Mr. Hodge, who won the Olivier Award -London’s Tony- for best actor in a musical last year. A few years earlier he showed his musical theater chops opposite Jane Krakowski in a well regarded London production of 'Guys and Dolls'.
'It would have been sacrilege to do it on Broadway without Doug', said David Babani, a lead producer and the Menier’s artistic director. 'With Doug’s Albin you get 10 performances for the price of one, because he has the deep theatrical training and classical skills to attack the layers of this character. 'It’s a mixture of straight pathos, a little bit of clowning and beautiful musical theater showmanship'.
Harvey Fierstein, the actor and writer who created the book for 'La Cage,' with music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, said that among the Albins he has seen, Mr. Hodge has created the most authentic drag queen. 'Their faces and posture out of drag reflect their tough, exhausting existences, but then they become these lovely, funny, sexy people once they go onstage', Mr. Fierstein said. 'Doug’s Albin has a Cockney accent and cooks in the kitchen wearing rubber gloves and smoking a cigarette. Not glamorous, just right'.
Mr. Hodge suspects that he gained an intuitive understanding for drag performance during his early years in show business. The son of a civil-service worker and a nurse, Mr. Hodge had a knack for impersonations as a boy, and at 16 he won a competition at a pub near his village, Wigmore, in southeast England, that put him on a touring circuit performing at NATO bases in the 1970s. 'For a time I really
thought acting was just impersonating,” he recalled. 'But impersonation is just big brush strokes, really. What makes acting different is empathy'.
His first experience with traditional theater came when he performed a speech from Pinter’s play “The Caretaker” to win admission to the National Youth Theater, which eventually led him to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He came to notice in Britain in the late 1980s for his leading roles in television series like 'Capital City', then took parts in 'several movies that were total flops and left me wondering what I was doing with my career'.
That changed in 1993, Mr. Hodge said, when the director David Leveaux cast him as the bodyguard Foster in Pinter’s 'No Man’s Land', in which Pinter himself starred as the alcoholic intellectual, Hirst.
'Harold and I became great friends, and the truth is he became a second father to me,', said Mr. Hodge, who went on to act in or direct the Pinter plays 'Moonlight', 'Betrayal' and 'The Caretaker'.
'He was someone I could talk to and confide in very easily', Mr. Hodge added. 'And I felt I was very like him. I just didn’t have his genius'.
Pinteresque qualities in Mr. Hodge’s Albin, according to Mr. Grammer, are the beats and pauses in some of his dialogue and the way he fits into an ensemble. 'He understands about tossing the ball to another actor, so to speak, and the way that actors can play off each other and energize each other', Mr. Grammer said.
Mr. Johnson, the 'Cage' director, said that he saw 'Pinter’s deep intelligence, lack of affect and rigorous craftsmanship in Doug', qualities that he believes are part of his Albin. 'In musicals I don’t think you have actors analyzing each moment, almost using a Stanislavskian analysis, which Doug does as he turns from Albin into
Zaza, or from Mother into Albin, or in the way he punches through certain words in ‘I Am What I Am,’ 'Zaza’s Act I closer, a sung through crescendo of survival.
Mr. Hodge said that he wanted to avoid caricature in his performance of Albin. The father of two children with his companion, the actress Tessa Peake-Jones, Mr. Hodge had not spent time in drag bars or with drag queens until he began doing research for the role. He recalled standing sheepishly at one drag bar in Birmingham at 3 a.m., sipping pints amid seven foot tall drag queens whose cleavage came up to his face. 'I spent a few nights with those women and learned a good deal about how very hard their lives were, as women and as men', Mr. Hodge said. 'I saw a lot of Albin and Zaza there. And I was determined that no one would see my Albin as any sort of parody, but as a very real, complicated human being'.
Updated On: 4/18/10 at 12:19 PM
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