When Your World Spins Too Fast

It's an ugly time in our culture. I see pundits on cable news trying to explain why it's ugly and what we can do about it. But almost all of them miss the central point.

America is changing in big ways, very quickly, and to a substantial minority, that is terrifying. And right now, for those folks, fear motivates everything in them. These people fear losing power (that they never really had), fear losing social status (that they never really had), fear losing their culture (which was never as White or European as they think it was), fear losing the America they love (that never actually existed except in midcentury sitcoms).

And you know what the Jedi teach -- Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. It's not hard at all to see the truth in that, displayed every day in our culture.

Many years ago I was talking to Steve Woolf at the Rep, and I was noting a theme (the use and abuse of money) that ran through every play in that Rep season, and I asked him if that was on purpose. He said that no, that kind of thing was never on purpose for him, but also that halfway through each season, he would become aware of that season's theme. And then in retrospect, he could see how that idea had been swimming around in his brain and in the zeitgeist as he was programming the season.

I think the same thing happened to me and Dowdy when we were planning New Line's current season. We can now see that the theme that emerged, that connects the three shows in our season, is The Triumph of the Other. All three of our shows are built on that theme, but neither Dowdy nor I were at all aware of that when we set the season.

After working on La Cage the last couple months, and now, sharing it with our audiences, I see that this seemingly lightweight 1983 comedy, slightly revised in 2008, has profound weight and relevance in 2019. Even more than I anticipated.

I realized last night, watching our show, that the club in our show is America. The conservatives are fighting to close that club, but the people of La Cage ultimately win, not because of any arbitrary morality or lack thereof, but because the people of La Cage are demonstrably better people -- more open, more loving, more accepting, and less judgmental. In this story, the conservatives are a small, weak, ineffectual, scared group.

It's America in 2019 in micro.

In our country right now, "the La Cage people" -- i.e., social liberals -- are in the majority, according to every poll, and conservative America is shrinking. Conservatives still cause lots of noise and lots of trouble, but the Dindons of America can't shut down this new world that's forming itself right in front of our eyes -- a browner, more diverse, more socially liberal America than ever before, with no racial majority.

But also notice the complexity of this story. We see from both Georges and Albin some initial anti-straight bigotry. They do move past that fairly quickly, but that's their initial impulse, to be as fearful, as insular as their in-laws-to-be.

I think of all this as America's perpetual battle between the 1950s (conservatism) and the 1960s (liberalism). So many great musicals are about that battle -- Hair, Grease, Rocky Horror, The Fantasticks, Cry-Baby, and others.

But that's not what La Cage is about. There is no genuine threat here -- even if you don't know the story, you probably sense that the bigot and bully won't triumph, right? The question is whether the Good People will hurt each other in the process. The fun of the show's climax is the complexity of the problem they've created and the suspense of how they will extricate themselves and deliver the happy ending we assume is coming.

Right before the Dindons arrive for dinner, Jean-Michel says to the family:

All right, you three. Listen carefully. For the next twenty-one hours there will be people of a lifestyle far removed from the one you live. I beseech you, for the next twenty-one hours to dispense with everything you take pride in and everything that brings you personal joy. My future depends on it.

It's a funny line and it gets a laugh, but it also stings like hell. This is not just about disguise; it's about the suppression, the rejection of their very life force, of the joy and fun that gets them through each day.

I keep telling people that, at its heart, La Cage is really just about a middle-aged married couple and whether or not their relationship can survive this crisis. The brilliance of the show (and the original play and film) is that, just as in a John Waters movie, the Others are Normal, and it's the Ordinary People who are the true Others.

And so, even if we're not Other in the real world, we identify with the Others throughout this story. That's a pretty neat trick.

But on an even more basic level, this is a story about Joy, and whether or not Fear is more powerful.

La Cage aux Folles is all about joy -- both in the show's form (the joy of singing and dancing) and in its content. After all, what is our story about? How does our middle-aged couple survive the crisis? Their lives are filled with joy, and they share it liberally. That's how. The central conflict hinges on the potential destruction of that joy. But really, the action of the show can be charted as Joy embraced, Joy suppressed, Joy betrayed, and finally, Joy as healing.

It's all about joy. Which, I'd argue, is what the musical theatre is all about.

Once in a while, New Line produces a well-known show and we shock the hell out of our audience with it. Not because we change anything (we don't), not because we impose crazy new concepts on it (we don't), but because we take it seriously and we work hard to find all that's meaningful and beautiful in the material.

It stunned us last season that our Anything Goes was such a revelation to so many people. All we did was take the material seriously, to reveal how brilliant and smart and wickedly insightful the show (at least the 1962 version) really is. The same thing is happening now with La Cage.

Everyone is stunned by the emotional power of this story, but we didn't add that to the show; we just revealed it. They're stunned at the subtlety of Zak's performance as Albin, but all we're doing is bringing these characters to the most honest and authentic life we can. But again, we're not adding anything to these characters; just revealing what's already there. The story is overflowing with human truth.

Maybe too many productions don't do this simplest and most fundamental of things, taking the material seriously. But it's not magic; it's our job. And it's fun!

Ultimately in La Cage, Joy wins. As it will in the middle-aged relationship that is America. But as we learn from La Cage, it wins only through love and a little ingenuity. And the gays.

The whole run's been selling out. Just four more electrifying performances!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott