Star Bulletin – John Berger
Bad theater bludgeons the audience through a series of emotional ups and downs. Good theater makes the journey voluntary. With John Rampage as director, and Randl Ask starring as Albin, Diamond Head Theatre’s production “La Cage Aux Folles” is very good theater indeed.
Rampage presents the ever-popular musical as a light but touching love story. Ask transcends the obvious issues of sexual orientation by playing Albin with a sense of humanity that makes the familiar character more than a stereotypical transvestite.
The story is a variation of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” Albin and Georges have been together for more than 20 years. Georges owns a big-budget transvestite revue in St. Tropez. Albin, known professionally at Zaza, is the show’s multitalented star. Their relationship hits a rough spot when Jean-Michel, the result of Georges’ only experiment with heterosexual sex, tells them he is getting married and wants to bring his fianc?e, Anne, and her parents over for dinner.
The problem is that Anne’s father, Edouard Dindon, is a homophobic politician whose campaign platform includes closing down transvestite revues.
Jean-Michel is confident that his father can pass himself off as heterosexual long enough to fool Dindon, but demands for the sake of his love for Anne that Albin, the only “mother” he has ever known, move out of the apartment so that his long-lost biological mother can pretend to be Georges’ wife.