La Cage Aux Folles - Original Production

Glad you enjoy it.

The original production was fantastic, bright, dazzling, hilarious, beautiful to look at, expertly staged, with a wonderful score by Jerry Herman. It epitomized the classic Broadway musical that delivered all the goods -- and then some -- and made audiences cheer. The applause at the end "I Am What I Am," was thunderous. My own favorite song was Song on the Sand. I'm also partial to With Anne on My Arm. It was probably the last Broadway show during which I felt on a high throughout. After this momentary experience of heaven-on-earth, it was was then back to the vast wasteland.

It was so great that even the Tony voters couldn't bring themselves to deny it the Tony Award for best score and best musical.

One of Arthur Laurent's books (sorry, can't remember which one) goes into a lot of detail about the show. Of course, he manages to take credit for almost everything good about the show, but there are lots of fun details.

I remember it as a lavish and very moving production. One special moment sticks in my mind when Ann magically appears to dance with the son during "With Ann On My Arm."

I remember my grandmother went to see it and loved it. At the end the Les Cagelles threw out cards with their drag names into the audience.

I still have the cards. One is from Chantal and the other is Lo Singh.

Lo Singh kissed all hers with bright red lipstick.

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I saw the original in tryouts in Boston...I liked it ..didn't love it because I didn't like George Hearn..while I love his voice usually , a drag queen who didn't try at all to sing like a woman was kind of off kilter to me..It was like he was Sweeney Todd in a dress......He acted somewhat fem but sang with his big MANLY voice.
I loved the new version seeing it 2x (had to go back and see Harvey ...and even with his hideous singing voice I like him better than George Hearn..

I was underwhelmed. Certainly After Eight is correct that Herman wrote some of his most beautiful songs: "Song on the Sand", "Look Over There"; and the title number was very funny. (I always laugh at the duchess who gave birth "at the bar"!)

On the other hand the casting was very uneven. George was wonderful, of course. But the kid playing Albin and Zaza's son seemed straight off the bus from Iowa; i never believed he had been raised in St. Tropez.

Worst of all: that goddamn anthem, "I Am What I Am"! Sung by a character who IIRC runs away right after singing it. (I know he comes back in drag, but it isn't the strongest character moment. For one thing, he sings it to his mirror, not to anyone who needs to hear it, such as his husband.) The number reminds me of how the wimpiest people (gay or straight) are always announcing, "I don't take **** from anybody!", which we all know is a lie.

To this day, that song embarrasses me for the character, for the singer and for Jerry Herman himself. I can barely sit through a Gay Pride parade because they play that drivel ad infinitum.

One qualification: the film version (I mean the original, not BIRDCAGE) is my favorite foreign language comedy of all time. So it's fair to allow that I may have been fated to disappointment with the musical adaptation.

And BTW, a local singer here in PS does a version of "I Am" that goes:

"Spam, how I love spam
Straight from can, etc."

It's a much superior lyric.

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I took my parents to see the original production...

Exactly. It was a show that was safe for parents.

Updated On: 7/25/13 at 07:49 PM

I should have mentioned "The Best of Times", PJ. I agree it is also a great song. THAT's the "anthem" we should be singing instead of "I Am..."

This is not a personal reference to you, PJ, but I think a lot of gay people got caught up in the romance of seeing believable gay people finally brought to the Broadway musical stage. (Particularly, as you point out, when our friends were dropping like flies off- and on-stage.)

But William Finn had already done it better off-Broadway.

Except that the gay people of MARCH OF THE FALSETTOS are as rich and complex as any heterosexual characters ever musicalized.

The gay people of LA CAGE are (try not to choke) farceurs in a piece from which most farcical elements have been removed. I understand the show was a creature of its time and that time was a momentous one.

That doesn't (and didn't) blind me to the mediocrity of the production.

PJ- Were you in the LA CAGE or SUNDAY... camp on Tony night of 1984? (Not that we make theater for awards.)

I can only say that listening to Doug Hodge murder "I Am What I Am" (and the whole score) was a low point in my theater-going life. George Hearn might not have been a convincing drag-queen to some, but at least he sang the song beautifully.

My favorite Herman score is still MAME, though.

This was a show I saw, as a high schooler, on my first-ever trip to NY - at this point (April 1985) starring George Hearn and Van Johnson. Hearn was all booming voice and Tony Award.. and Johnson was just easy and wonderful, just as in his movies.. Hearn's down the aisle exit at the end of I Am What I Am is still a great memory...


With that said, I saw the show on Monday in NYC - and the next Saturday saw an even better cast, in STL, on the 1st Nat'l tour - with the stupendous Keene Curtis as Albin - and a surprising Peter Marshall as Georges. To this day, Curtis' performance as Albin, simply heartbreaking/touching - totally different than the way Hearn played it - is at the top of my "greatest memories" list. If Hearn won the Tony, Curtis would have, well, won an Oscar in comparison, he was so great... (later reprising the role, with Marshall, on Bway)

I also had the chance to see two other La Cage casts...- the 2nd(?) Nat'l tour, with the great Harvey Evans as Albin - alongside the memorable Georges of the also-great Larry Kert - this with the original production/staging.

And an early/mid 90s tour with an Albin originally announced for Bway - right as the show closed - Lee Roy Reams, alongside (as Georges) former Bway and tour Albin, Walter Charles. Ohhh.... how I didn't like the overplayed Reams... In looking up details on this - I see it was directed/choreographed by Chet Walker, late of Pippin... not by the original team...

For those curious - check out this guy on YT and you might be surprised what you can find from the above... y1t1b1w1a1ym1a1n

"I Put a Little More Mascara On" is sung to a mirror (at first), then he transitions to the stage. That's not "I Am What I Am," though.

Gav, I feel completely opposite. When I saw March Of the Falsettos, everything felt off to me. It didn't "dig deep" or stir me or move me. I didn't find the characters rich, I found them cliche. The songs for the most part were unmemorable. The cast was very good, however.

La Cage was magnificent. I saw it about a year into the original run. My leads were Walter Charles (replacing Hearn) and Van Johnson (replacing Gene Barry). Most of the remaining original cast was still in the show.

It was everything a Broadway musical comedy should be for me. A solid story that resonated without being either maudlin or preachy. It was, as PJ says, a celebration of life and love, that just happened to be about two guys. It was "mainstream" musical theatre with a story that most people in the mid-'80s weren't ready to embrace ... yet they defied the odds. This show defied the odds.

It wasn't quirky and little and cloying, like March of the Falesttos. It was big, and sweeping, and romantic, and bold. And it worked.

Sorry, Gav, I can't disagree with you more here.

As for a question about the opening number, I remember it being breathtaking. There were three distinct set changes and three distinct costume changes on stage during the number. The "girls" started out in wonderfully over-the-top robes (you've seen the pictures), each one more elaborate than the next. Those robes were attached to hooks and lifted right off the dancers as they continued the song wearing something that looked like pajama tops and bottoms. After that sequence, those costumes gave way to sailor suits with skimpy skirts and a big tap dance section. It was one change after the other, all during the opening song. The cast and the audience was breathless when it ended. It was quite a way to start the show.

As for the sets in general, they looked expensive at the time, but with today's eyes, I think you'd see them as very "Miami Beach in the '80s." Art Deco meets Golden Girls. Stylized, but definitely of their era and of their location. (Yes, it was San Tropez, but it still had that beach resort '80s look to it, like Miami.)

I also remember how surprised I was at how powerful the Herman score was in the theatre. I had heard the songs already from the cast album (yes, records), since it had been running over a year already. But those songs really took off in the theatre. They felt theatrical and more layered and more propelled by the story. "Big and splashy" suddenly had deep meaning and purpose. The Best of Times, in particular, was very emotional for me. I got tears in my eyes as I clapped along with the entire audience at the Palace. It was huge and intimate at the same time. Joyous and melancholy. But most of all, deeply heartfelt.

Those kind of shows and those kind of moments happen so rarely, it was to be treasured. Almost 30 years later, I still treasure it.

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Updated On: 7/26/13 at 07:56 AM

"And I one of those who took offense at Jerry Herman's "dig" at Sondheim's supposed inability to write melodic music, "

Did you likewise take offense at Sondheim's dig at Richard Rodgers and audiences who like his music with that snide "there's not a tune you can hum"
business in that 16 performance flop masterpiece, Merrily We Roll Along?

And as for Jerry Herman's supposed "dig" at the Great One, his comment referred to his OWN music. Hard to believe it, I know, but not every waking moment of everyone's life revolves around Sondheim.

Though you'd never know it here.

^

I didn't find it in the slightest bit funny. Or complimentary.

And for the simple reason that it was neither.

Funny how the Great One is absolved of all trangressions imputed to ordinary mortals.