When I went to the first night of La Cage Aux Folles at the Menier back in January, I managed to become part of the show – and some of the reviews (and diary columns, too!) – when Philip Quast, playing nightclub host Georges, managed to marry me off to Quentin Letts in a blissful piece of counter-intuitive relationship making. Now that the Menier run is about to end this weekend – and no announcement, yet, of a transfer, so this may be the last we see of it – I went again last night, and this time had an even stranger, but even better, evening!
It started off with discovering I was sat at the same front row table as the mother of the Menier’s last hit – namely, Patrick Marber’s mum! And just along the row, waving hello, was the Menier’s next attraction – Maria Friedman, who was once, of course, Quast’s co-star in a break-out show for both of them, the original production of Sunday in the Park with George that they starred in together at the National Theatre – a show, of course, since revived at this very theatre before going on to the West End and now Broadway.
But there were also two understudy notices up.
I was fearful that one of these might be for Douglas Hodge’s Albin, who missed the entire first month of the run – when I later caught up with him after he returned to the show, he told me that he had suffered pneumonia. But he was, happily, on; it was the secondary characters of Jacqueline, the neighbouring restaurateur, and Jacob, the maid/butler to Albin. Jacqueline was being played by Vanessa Leigh Hicks – who was in fact a veteran of the original London production of La Cage Aux Folles when it first transferred to the London Palladium from Broadway in 1986.
One of my oldest and best friends was in that original West End production, too – Stephen J Colley, as his stage name was, was a “swing” Cagelle and also, coincidentally, understudy to Jacob! I actually took him to the first night here at the Menier, but alas not last night, as perhaps I could have finally seen his Jacob: when he actually went on (and he did) at the London Palladium, he neglected to tell me, so I missed him in it! (His casting as Jacob made an interesting bit of colour blind casting – the role is famously typically played by a black man, but Steve is – as Bette Midler might say – whiter than the Queen). But Steve would, in any case, have been unavailable: though he went on to appear in the original West End cast of Metropolis — and was later in the chorus of Aspects of Love — he subsequently retired from the theatre, and now works as a counsellor.
There’s a lot by way of relationship counselling afoot in La Cage, as it happens, so perhaps he should come in to hold workshops after the show. As it is, the show remains a sheer tonic for tolerance, and the sight of two offstage straight men affectionately charting the bonds between two long-term lovers magnificently propels it here. Hodge did his research: he told me that before he did it he crept into a drag bar one night to take notes from a real drag queen (my friend Steve could have given him notes on this, too, having done that too in his life!). Hodge told me, too, that he was spotted: the drag queen, obviously an avid theatregoer, saw him in the audience, and introduced him from the stage – so he had to explain what he was doing there!
And Quast, meanwhile, spotted me again, too, last night: though I was spared another marriage (it would have been bigamy, I suppose), he kept flirting with me, as his character breaks the fourth wall and the Menier itself becomes the cabaret’s audience. I should point out that I know him a bit – not just from interviewing him a couple of times, first when he was in Sunday in the Park all those years ago, and then more recently when he was in Evita — but offstage, too, since we were both at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival in his native Australia last year. But it has always been a dream to be on the receiving end of his affections – even stage ones! – so I went home happy last night! As he did, no doubt, to his wife and family.
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