Old hat
Lloyd Evans
La Cage aux Folles Menier Chocolate Factory The British Ambassador’s Belly Dancer Arcola Angry Young Man Trafalgar Studio
La Cage aux Folles is a musical based on a classic comedy by Jean Poiret. Terry Johnson’s new version is perfectly agreeable. Nice sets, charming actors and the audience loved it. So what’s wrong? Well, the threadbare storyline for a start: Georges has to persuade his gay partner Albin to absent himself from a dinner party because the guests will find their sexuality shocking. That’s it. Trouble is this dilemma feels at least three decades old and the characters — especially M. Renaud the homophobic conservative politician — seem as quaint and irrelevant as the unicorns and damsels sporting on a medieval tapestry. The sluggish script takes ages to trek to its surprise-free climax and the long march is elongated with high-kicking dance numbers by a ladyboy chorus-line and gay anthems like ‘I am what I am’. A wonderfully stirring song but its impact has shrunk to zero now that the battle it spearheaded has been fought and won. It’s as dated as ‘Free Nelson Mandela’, a melody that once spurred a generation of freedom-fighters to write an angry letter to the Independent. If retro feelgood musical comedy is your thing you’ll enjoy this, but for me it cost too great an imaginative effort to recall the era when ‘a homosexual underworld’ even existed, let alone had the power to arouse indignation.
The British Ambassador’s Belly Dancer is about the wife of Craig Murray, the whistle-blowing diplomat who was sacked after exposing the use of torture in Uzbekistan. He returned home, you may remember, hitched to a young bride he’d met at a strip club. Here she is, Nadira Murray, a woman of extraordinary poise and beauty and with an extraordinarily ugly story to tell. In Uzbekistan, she was born to a family of posh and educated commies who worked in the theatre (under Marxism, apparently, actors were thought to be valuable citizens, not sad preening hysterical megalomaniacs), and when the system collapsed so did the family. Her father slipped into despair and heroin once his career imploded. Others chased the dollar, he chased the dragon. The family’s best asset in the new capitalist order was Nadira’s beauty and as a stripper she earned enough to support her parents. This inspired her father to wean himself off the smack. So far, so Cinderella.
The mood darkens when she explains how justice in Uzbekistan resides in the barrel of a gun. Uzbek girls marry early because without male protection they’re likely to be raped by the police. Thousands of unwed girls lose their virginity in the interrogation room under threat of trumped-up drugs charges. Nadira fell victim twice. No wonder she grabbed the first chance to get out of there married to a brave and liberal-minded British diplomat. And when Craig Murray drew the world’s attention to the criminals who run Uzbekistan, our brave and liberalminded government sided with the criminals. Shameful. The show ends on a happier note with a display of wonderfully graceful belly dancing. An amazing, harrowing, sickening, uplifting and unexpectedly brilliant piece of theatre.
I went to the press night of two short plays by Ben Woolf only to find that the second had been cancelled. Not, I hope, because the first wasn’t good. It was fine. A perfect example of its type. Exuberant, clever, weightless student whimsy. Mind you, the audience reacted to it with gales and hurricanes of laughter, which it scarcely deserved. That’s why I usually avoid the official openings of plays. Theatre is stagy enough without the added histrionics of a press night. For some reason, producers always kid themselves that the critics will be fooled by a house packed with cronies and claqueurs humping and howling with simulated laughter. Come on. We’re not that thick. And nothing is so obvious and so offputting as the fake guffaws of coerced siblings, ambitious, dagger-eyed mothers and hooting, braying, last-gasp grandparents. Ben Woolf’s frenetic comedy follows the progress of Yuri, a Russian immigrant lost in London who falls in with a gang of thugs and upper-class conmen. There’s an interesting formal innovation: all four actors play all of the parts which means that each of them plays Yuri. It should be confusing but it works superbly. In the show’s best running gag one of the actors has the task of adding atmosphere but he hasn’t read the script. His last-minute impersonations of dogs, statues and other decorations are pretty funny. Woolf and his troupe are charming and talented so let’s hope they soon advance beyond the smug cleverness of the student rag. Angry Young Man (misleading title) is like dining on candyfloss.
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