What fun! Never before have I seen this musical so at home -- due to pastel scenery and lighting -- on the French Riviera. New to me, too, in the costumes at the nightclub of the title: the individuality of colors, styles, textures in the clothing of Les Cagelles' introductory number. And the interior La Cage club staging is the Apple's most glittery in ages, a fine showplace for lively dancing and prancing as well as the opening song, "We Are What We Are." What they are, of course, are (with a couple of female exceptions) transvestite performers, starring Zsa Zsa (actually fine-voiced Christopher Swan's wonderfully flamboyant Albin).
Dignified Brian Minyard is just right as owner-emcee Georges and a great singing and loving 20+ years' companion to Albin.
Trouble comes into Paradise when Georges' son Jean-Michel (the result of a decades-old, drunken night's liaison), falls for Anne, daughter of a puritanical politician who crusades against gays and La Cage-type entertainment. Jean-Michel (Craig Weiskerger, who looks like a young Dustin Hoffman but enunciates much better singing) wants to bring Anne's parents (Roy Johns, strict and properly anal, with flustered wife played by fine soprano Sharon Lesley) to meet his parents. That includes his biological mother and excludes his real one, Albin.
Before things work out with the help of restauranteer Jacqueline (always reliable Roberta MacDonald), George and Albin's love is tested. It's deepened by remembrances, celebrated in a lovely "Song on the Sand." Jean-Michel, proclaiming love "With Anne on My Arm" while stepping out with lively, attractive Kathryn Ohrenstein as Anne, finally recognizes Albin's motherly love by returning a filial kind.
Keone Dent camps impressively as the leading couple's maid-valet. J. Paul Wargo is realistic as a stage manager who progressively takes his lumps from a tough Cagelle. Chorus "gals" prove quick-change artists in a variety of supporting roles when not on the nightclub stage. John Visser delivers the musical support.
There's a moral to the story, but it wouldn't be moral to tell it and let it be dismissed. It should be felt at the Apple's La Cage aux Folles.
