Voor de liefhebbers heb ik het interview met Harvey Fierstein over La Cage aux Folles uit de Playbill van deze week gelpaatst. http://www.playbill.com/features/article/147622-Reign-of-Fierstein
Reign of Fierstein
Author-actor Harvey Fierstein returns to La Cage Aux Folles and a role he created…. Literally.
By Melissa Rose Bernardo
“This is the production I asked for,†Fierstein says. “In 1983, attitudes were different. To paint a picture: When AIDS hit, people said things like, ‘I’m not going to a restaurant in New York because they all have gay waiters and I’ll get AIDS’. So because of the times, the original was done in, shall we say, a softer way. It was a little whitewashed.†The protagonists — club owner Georges and his partner Albin (aka Zaza) — never kissed, notes Fierstein. Currently, at the Longacre theatre, they lock lips eight times a week. “We’re no longer glossing over the story. A gay couple that’s married isn’t a joke anymore. But neither is it a reality.â€
Back in 1984, he remembers, there were two women mixed into the otherwise all-male chorus line of Cagelles — “so that if a guy thought the drag queens were hot, he could say, ‘Oh no, I was looking at the real girl.’ (Now they’re all men…. Svelte, enviably, sculpted men.) “The drag show was this huge Folies Bergère number with the kind of costumes that no drag show I saw ever had,†he says. “Those shows had a level of tackiness to them.â€
Don’t get Fierstein wrong — he’s not trashing the original. He simply never envisioned such a “gigantic extravaganza.†So when David Babani asked to produce a revival at his 150-seat Menier Chocolate Factory in London, “I said, ‘I will only give you permission if this is what you give me,’†Fierstein says in his grittier, smaller initial vision. Coincidentally, that’s exactly what Babani wanted. “I said, ‘Go ahead, cookie.’â€
What Fierstein hadn’t envisioned was donning Zaza’s tiara and mascare. Over the years he’s been “pointed to,†but, he says, “I don’t think anybody actually had the balls (to ask)!â€
The same night he belts out his first rendition of “I Am What I Am,†he’ll share his first kissed with Jeffrey Tambor, who’s stepping into the role of Georges. “I’m excited to see what Harvey the actor does,†Fierstein muses. “When you’re a writer you have a clear picture of what you’re writing.†(Speaking of writing, Fierstein has not one but two musicals in the works. Newsies with Alan Menken and Kinky Boots with Cyndi Lauper.)
“I definitely have Zaza in the incubator,†says Fierstein. “The costumes, the wigs - all of that stuff is being redesigned for me. God knows what she’s going to come out like!â€
