A great meringue of a show with extra sequins
La Cage Aux Folles (New Wimbledon Theatre and touring) Verdict: The best of kitsch ★★★★✩ SOME touring shows are designed to travel economy, partly so they can be thrown up and taken down more easily week in, week out.
But Bill Kenwright’s touring version of La Cage Aux Folles — starring John Partridge, Adrian Zmed and Marti Webb — is high-spec razzmatazz that travels not business class but showbiz class.
EastEnders star Partridge yodels gloriously, like a super-size Shirley Bassey, as Albin — the leading drag queen at the Cage Aux Folles nightclub on the French Riviera.
Indeed, Partridge positively bathes in the sparkling chintz of Gary McCann’s multicoloured, Art Deco design with its gold pillars, louche velvet curtain and back-lit steps that are his personalised catwalk.
But he’s also called on to affect dismay and injury at the news he is to be excluded from meeting the ultra-conservative parents of his adoptive son’s fiancee.
Trying to man up and disguise himself as ‘Uncle Al’ to receive the parents, Partridge makes a tasty five-course banquet out of his attempts at a John Wayne swagger, and Martin Connor’s direction sees that he is borne along in a cloud of sequins and feather boas.
The show’s three great toe-tappers also do much to blow this great meringue of a performance along, with the brassy I Am What I Am, the sentimental ode to pleasure The Best Of Times and, of course, the title tune.
Partridge’s towering physique adds to the comedy, but he is handsomely square-jawed, too, and bats fake eyelashes effectively. He is ably supported by Zmed as his peacemaking, manager husband, George. Zmed does tend to move about as though presenting the National Lottery, but Marti Webb is a twinkly eyed, lush-voiced pro as Albin’s saviour, the maitre d’ of St Tropez’s finest restaurant.
Apart from the vista of spangles and backcombed wigs, it’s the chorus of young men in drag, high-kicking and doing splits, that makes the show. They are also what got the silver-haired crowd to their feet at the end of this week’s matinee — walking sticks and all.