To most queer people, nostalgia feels like a luxury. Our history being so ancient yet so recent, there barely seems to be a past to get sentimental about. Fiction then comes to the rescue – stories told in the present, which extend towards the past and the future. Such sense of comfort probably accounts for a good part of the success of La Cage aux Folles, the 1983 musical by Herman and Fierstein that – for the first time in the history of Broadway – centred its plot on an openly homosexual couple. In the world of La Cage, nostalgia doesn’t only tinge the words of the ageing Georges and Albin/Zaza after the many years spent together; it also resonates in a score that draws deliberately on the antiquated yet charming style of older musicals. In his new production for Berlin’s Komische Oper, an old acquaintance of the theatre, director Barrie Kosky, captures the dreamy reminiscence that perhaps risks being overlooked in La Cage. However, even under Koen Schoots’ frisky conducting, the musical’s more biting and piquant side seemed to go somewhat missing.
Given his reputation for flamboyance, it is hard to imagine Kosky in a habitat more natural than the stage of La Cage. Indeed, from the very opening number – a materialisation of the nightclub’s name, with the drag queens coming out of bird cages – the show unfolds in a sequence of dazzlingly colourful acts. Dressed in Klaus Bruns’ marvellous costumes, Les Cagelles lit up the whole theatre, amazing the audience with a show that certainly lives up to the club’s promises of “glamour and romance and indigestion”. As an occasional palate cleanser, the director offers the scenes at the café along the promenade. Away from the frenzy, in quiet intimacy, just a few tables against the backdrop of a starry sky are the romantic setting of the exchanges between the two old lovers.
Yet in the pendulum between extravaganza and tenderness, Kosky’s production nearly loses track of the third defining trait of La Cage aux Folles – its defiance, which lies at the very core of the musical and prompts its most famous number, the Act 1 finale “I Am What I Am”. The phallic-themed décor of the two men’s apartment would hardly seem scandalous to anyone who is not, like their son’s parents-in-law, head of the Tradition, Family and Morality Party; and Jacob’s boisterous, unabashedly queer demeanour as a maid is endearing, rather than shocking. It is true that the text itself avoids any attempt at being overtly militant. Still, La Cage’s historical relevance as the first gay-themed Broadway musical would have maybe deserved a more daring homage.
A good tribute to the show’s original spirit came instead from the four main actors, who managed to give life to a group of characters that often border on one-dimensionality. What has aged best about the script of La Cage is what is usually neglected: the portrayal of two men who have grown old together. By casting Peter Renz and Stefan Kurt respectively, the maturity of Georges and Albin’s relationship was made readily apparent and credible. Renz’s soft tenor complemented his composed attitude, the occasional, playful exasperation always revealing an affectionate nature. Such gentleness shone through his role as master of ceremonies, and eventually found an ideal outlet in the simple appeal of the “Song on the Sand”. On his part, probably encouraged by the terrific wardrobe assembled for him, Kurt embraced his inner diva without missing a beat. Much like many cabaret prima donnas, his Zaza valued magnetism and charisma over polished singing. If Kurt’s voice was intentionally rough, his manners were smooth and seductive, and his charm all the more enhanced by such contrast. But when left alone in the middle of the stage, with no sumptuous clothes to step into, he also exposed Albin in his vulnerability.
Orbiting around the main couple, Daniel Daniela Yrureta Ojeda’s Jacob/Ramona and Nicky Wuchinger’s Jean-Michel embodied the opposite extremes of the male gender spectrum in the show. Even without their own song, Yrureta Ojeda made their character memorable thanks to an unflagging physical and verbal exuberance, which brought a most-needed quota of unrepentant queerness into the theatre. Wuchinger, instead, played the young straight lover by the book, his warm voice making him his father’s rightful son.