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Culture Musicals

La Cage Aux Folles

LA CAGE AUX FOLLES by Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein (Mirvish). At the Royal Alexandra Theatre (260 King West). Runs to November 18, Tuesday-Saturday 8 pm, matinees Wednesday and Saturday-Sunday 2 pm (with some exceptions). $35-$130. 416-872-1212, mirvish.com. See listing. Rating: NN

The touring production of La Cage Aux Folles is a big disappointment.

From the small, tinny orchestra sound at the start to a final curtain that tries to push “fun” but rarely achieves it, this award-winning revival of a celebrated 80s Broadway musical is tired and largely act-by-numbers.

Georges and Albin, a gay couple who run La Cage aux Folles, a transvestite club in Saint-Tropez – in drag as Zaza, Albin is the club’s star attraction – become frantic when their son, Jean-Michel (Michael Lowney) plans to marry a woman whose father is an ultra-conservative politician. The in-laws want to meet Jean-Michel’s parents but he insists that the pair on show be his long-since-disappeared biological mother and Georges, his father the effeminate Albin has to keep away.

Things are sorted out by the end, with recognition of the proper loving parents and some comedy involving the politician and his wife.

Along the way, there are a number of scenes in La Cage featuring Les Cagelles, a talented sextet of drag singer/dancers who provide some of the production’s few entertaining moments. Toronto’s Jeigh Madjus, as Georges and Albin’s butler/maid, Jacob, has a nice sense of playing the teasing, bitchy femme but has been directed to use it as Jacob’s single note.

There’s no entertainment from top-billed George Hamilton, whose Georges is bland, emotionally uninvolved in the action and has trouble crooning his songs.

Happily, Christopher Sieber’s Albin knows just what he’s doing and how to play all the character’s notes, from fretting and flirtatious to outraged and outre. He towers above the rest of the cast in several ways, not only in the quality of his performance but also standing taller than the other main actors and getting some laughs with that. The performer gets others with a vocal range that ranges from throaty mezzo to bull-moose bass, all put to good effect.

And with Hamilton offering no warmth or caring in the couple’s partnership, Sieber is pretty much working on his own. Jerry Herman’s music may not be ground-breaking, but there are some solid numbers Sieber is central to two of them, the moving I Am What I Am and a ballad, The Best Of Times, taken up by the company.

The original La Cage was important for offering a positive view of gays in the era of AIDS its revival in London and then New York several years ago was also hailed. Too bad Toronto isn’t seeing a show of similar quality.

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