John Simon's original review:
"The best way to enjoy LA CAGE AUX FOLLES is with earplugs. You can then see the luscious sets by David Mitchell, whose gliding, flying, gyrating is as thrilling as their design. You can see how Jules Fischer has lit them, making the waters of St. Tropez truly liquid, the sky above truly skyey. You can see the sumptuous and inventive costumes of Theoni V. Aldredge, tasteful even when they are conjuring up the outre. You can see, even without having to hear them, how good are the performances of Gene Barry, as Georges, the homosexual owner of the Cage aux Folles nightclub, and of George Hearn, as Albin, is lover and, under the name Zaza, the club's transvestite star. You could, unfortunately, not avoid seeing the rest of the cast or the strenuous but unrewarding choreography of Scott Salmon, but was there ever a perfect solution to anything?
And conveniently, earplugs are removable. For the three or four better songs Jerry Herman has written, you could take them out; for the others and for the reprises with which the show is awash, you could stick the plugs back in. You would certainly want to keep them in for the dialogue, whether it comes from the play by Jean Poiret (who also wrote the movie version) of whether it was contrived by Harvey Fierstein in what he may or may not percei e as the spirit of the original. I had precious little use for the film, but atleast it was authentically French rather than Brooklyn with a few nest-ce pas added, the points were made with a trowl rather than a sledgehammer, and the dinner scene was a genuine farce. It also had such find supporting actors as Michel Galabru as the girl's father.
I suppose there is no one left in America who doesn't know the story, and readers of this magazine recently had it rehearsed for them in Ross Wetzsteon's panegyric. It is, in its way, a remarkable concoction, cadging or coercing sympathy on various levels with the most meretricious premeditation. That homosexual relations are grossly oversimplified and sugarcoated in CAGE is no hanging matter; heterossexual relations have similiarly been falsified in muscals since year one - a very good year for cheap muscatel. But what we ave here is the something-specious-for-everybody mentality at its apogee. For the affluent, midd-class, middle-aged theatregoer there is a chance to feel wonderfully tolerant toward homosexuals, and tolerance is, of course, a good thing, though in this simplistic presentation it becomes really blindingly patronizing smugness. This adorable, happily married homosexual couple of their two decades' standing, and their sudden problem because "their" son is about to marry into a reactionary, anti-homosexual family (translation: Jewish into Christian or vice-versa, right into poor or vice versa, enlightenedly liveral into conventionally conservative or what have you), is the very stuff of which facile fiewer self-righteousness is made. After all, this is a homosexuality where drag merely means cute, marital fidelity between two men comes easy and lasts forever, and an S&M bullwhip is only a snappier kind of bongo drum.
For homosexuals, this, ever more than TORCH SONG TRILOGY, is the Broadway legitimization of their modus vivendi, all the way from respectable bourgeois to an outrageously transvestite, via a bidget of $5 million. That the homosexual couple is played by eminently heterosexual actors, that discrimination against them is represtned by paper mice (not even tigers), that Fierstein's (or perhaps Poiret's) values are seemingly no idifferent from Neil Simon's with one set of genitals changed, that if this were a musical based on the "thereatening" work of a gifted and candid homosexual such as Jean Genet or Djuna Barnes, there would be not standing ovations by the end of Act ! but a stampede for the exit does not trouble them at all. Frills, fantasy, factitiousness are there in abundance, and as these have worked for benighted heterosexuals, they'll work no less well for benighted homosexuals.
But there is worse: CAGE plays into the hands of homophobes. No "right-minded" antihomosexual (and which two-bit-fag-baiter doesn't consider himself rightminded?) would identify him- or herself with the heterosexual characters of this CAGE. Crude, stupid, unprepossessing - or, in the case of the young lovers, smarmy and untalented (John Weiner looks and acts like a TV weatherman from Albuquerque; Leslie Stevens is a five-and-ten-cent baby in a million-dollar store)- these people are no "us," say the sons and daughters of Anita Bryant as they march mulishly on.
But someone tells me, aren't you forgetting that this is only a musical - just entertainment? Well, as just entertainment it is fair to middling, as noted above. Arthur Laurents has directed with a mixture of obviousness and ingenuity (the latter, alas, often derived from sources as various as GYPSY and DREAMGIRLS); the sights are stunning and you can amuse yourself by following, not the predictable plot and feeble gags, but the itinerary across the stage of that $5 million, so well marshaled that you can see where every C-note went; and Barry and Hearn are truly accomplished and touching. The rest is as phony as the name of the tansvestite chorines at the club, Les Cagelles, which is about as French as "usherette."
However, the sanctimonious piety with which this show is being hailed, in standing ovartions, critical hossanas, bourgeois self-congratulation, and homosexual ecstasies - the first-act curtain number, "I Am What I Am," Albin's defiant self-ssertion as drag queen and surrogate mother to young Jean-Michel, is being touted as the new "gay anthem" - forces one to take it more seriously. I fully expect straight couples to wear the ticket stubs of CAGE as goody-goody-conduct medals on their chests. And take that "I Am What I Am": it is a fair enough show song, cleverly integrated into the plot, strategically positioned, and superlatively delivered by George hearn. Bt put it alongside the proud cocotte's chanson by Jacques Prevert and Joseph Kosma, "Je suis comme je suis" - which has been translated and adapted by Eric Bentley into the song of a 42nd Steet male hustler - and you can see the difference between true lyricism, honesty, art and a deftly posturing placebo.
Though considerable better than, say, Porky's, LA CAGE AUX FOLLES is equally beyong criticism; far be it from me to try to prevent its watered-down felicities from reaching their own leve. And, after all, CATS misrepresents felines, too"
"If you are going to do something, do it well. And leave something witchy."
-Charlie Manson
