La Cage aux Folles at Pasadena Playhouse — Page 2

That’s nice. But it has nothing to do with why this was lousy. Concepts are great when they work. You can have a promising concept and stick it as in this case with bad direction , bad casting , bad choreography , and bad everything.

I only read the Los Angeles Times, which was sort of a rave (with a few caveats).

I caught this over the weekend. It's a misfire. Misconceived and often mis-executed. There are some lovely performances in this (Cheyenne Jackson is terrific, and Michael MacDonald and Nicole Parker are doing absolutely yeomen work as the Didons) but it just...doesn't work. I actually liked a lot of what Kevin Calhoon is doing but he can't really sing the role - he's altering the vocal lines in a lot of his numbers to avoid notes into his mid-voice. He does manage a lovely "best of times is now", which he does mostly in falsetto, but "I am what I am" starts at an aggressive 10 and stays there. Confrontational is fine, but you got to give it some levels. And it's just not sung well.

I more object to the aesthetic of the production. I applaud Sam Pinkleton for trying something new, but it's fascinating watching the text of the piece resist his ideas. La Cage was a landmark show about queer acceptance, and yes Drag has changed drastically over the course of the last 30 years, but putting Albin into alternative, gender-queer drag really confuses the show. In "I am What I am" Albin is dressed in his finest, most beautiful drag, at the height of his femininity and he should be at the height of his power. This production puts him, wigless, in a femme clown outfit for that song. That bugged me. You are left with the sense that the drag show itself is not a fun sit. It was frequently neither staged nor choreographed well, and they allow some of the excellent drag performers and dancers in their cast the opportunity to show off. It was frustrating.

Agreed. A bit more on two of the performances you mention: Jackson is the heart of this production. He sings so, so beautifully, and plays Georges with so much restraint. He's the best thing in this production by a mile and his "Song of the Sand" was worth the price of admission by itself. And after watching him play straight in every other role I've seen him do, it was wonderful watching him play a role that allowed him to, for lack of a better word, butch it up less. Another positive: George Salazar, who is able to land every laugh in Jacob's arsenal, even with the production cutting the culmination of his arc (Jacob tripping and falling in his long-awaited La Cage debut was deemed too cruel, I suppose.)

Ryan J. Haddad, as Jean-Michel, also sings the role beautifully, but he is otherwise deeply miscast. This has nothing to do with the fact that he uses a walker - if anything his disability lent a certain amount of pathos to "With Anne on My Arm". But as delightful as I found his work in "Dark Disabled Stories", he is wildly unable to access any of the charm, heart, or fear that mitigates how awfully and selfishly Jean-Michel behaves in the show. If we don't believe that he is doing this out of desperation/panic/youthful blindness, he can come across like a monster. He came across like a monster.

The sheer amount of insane physical choices Michael McDonald makes as Didon must be seen to be believed. He and Nicole Parker are left to flail a bit as a deeply unfunny conception of their ensemble roles, the restaurant owners, as French-accented, very horny and deeply (deliberately) schticky, but when they come in as the Didons in Act Two, the production receives a jolt of well-needed energy. The petulant way he delivers the line "I don't much care for restaurant food", briefly devolving into a toddler while still maintaining a politician's dignity, was the biggest belly laugh of the entire production.