'La Cage' fun and flirty, and just a little dirty

Review

Except for the unforgivably tasteless warm-up and a slow-starting first act, the production of "La Cage aux Folles" at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts is charming.

The flamboyant, feathered musical, starring George Hamilton and Christopher Sieber, reveals a tender heart beating under kinky boots and corsets.

Georges (Hamilton) is the owner of a fabulous drag club in St. Tropez. The star of "La Cage" is Zaza, who is better known offstage as Albin (Sieber) – Georges' partner. When Georges' son, Jean-Michel (Billy Harrigan Tighe) comes home and announces his engagement to Anne Dindon (Allison Blair McDowell), hurt feelings and near personal disaster result.

Anne's parents are ultraconservative homophobes, so Jean-Michel asks Georges to keep Albin away when they come for a visit. He also asks that his biological mother join them instead, casting a traditional family portrait. But Albin finds out. After expressing his pain in a heart-wrenching rendition of "I Am What I Am," he runs away.

His love for the boy he helped raise, however, brings him home to portray an awkward Uncle Al. When Jean-Michel's mother fails to show, Albin casts off his man clothes for a woman's suit. For a time he fools Anne's family, but Albin's true gender and the nature of his relationship with Georges are eventually revealed. A little blackmail and a lot of sequins convert the Dindons from self-righteous intolerants to accepting human beings.

In the opening scenes, Hamilton seemed, well, tired. Though he was playing the straight man, as it were, he was a bit too taciturn here. He picked up speed, however, as the first act progressed, cutting a dashing figure for the sweetly romantic "Song on the Sand." In Act II, he showed more of his comedic gifts, tossing off one-liners with the panache of a seasoned performer.

Sieber, too, seemed stuck in the initial inertia. Yet he proved a phenomenal performer when Zaza and Les Cagelles – the nightclub's chorus – perform a show within a show. And when Albin is dismissed from the family for being himself and belts out "I Am What I Am," Sieber expresses the depth and meaning that all of those boas tried to camouflage. Anger, sadness and defiance powers his work here.

Then, in Act II, his gift for physical comedy comes to the fore. He makes a terrific mockery of John Wayne's manly gait.

It's unfortunate that the pre-opening act turned out to be counterintuitive to the show's message of acceptance. Referring to the audience's demographic makeup, drag queen Lily Whiteass crossed the line from slightly offensive to downright insulting.

Aside from that one sour note, "La Cage" was generally fun and flirty.

LA CAGE AUX FOLLES

When: 7:30 p.m. tonight and Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday

Where: David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts, Morsani Hall, 1010 N. MacInnes Place, Tampa; call (813) 229-7827 and www.strazcenter.org

How much: $47.50 to $79.50

Running time: Approximately 155 minutes