THEATER WOW: LA CAGE'S CAGELLES, 40 YEARS LATER
Something About Sharing, Something About Always.
For some time now I’ve been obsessed with the making of the 1983 Tony-Award winning musical, La Cage Aux Folles. It was a groundbreaking work, the first mainstream musical to put at its center a gay married couple, who are treated not with derision but acceptance and dignity. And it was an enormous hit, which is shocking not only because it was so far ahead of its time in subject matter, but because it came to Broadway precisely as AIDS was first coming into the public consciousness.
The cast and crew of La Cage was very involved in fund raising efforts to help people who got sick. Their producers Barry Brown and Fritz Holt hosted the first major celebrity gala at the Metropolitan Opera. The show’s cast members did benefits constantly and all over the place. Some of those benefits continue to this day.
A number of the creatives involved in La Cage have either written books themselves—book writer Harvey Fierstein, composer/lyricist Jerry Herman, director Arthur Laurents—or in the case of executive producer Allan Carr, been the subject of them.
But there are so many other people that made La Cage so special. And among them are the amazing 10 men and 2 women who sang and danced in drag as the Cagelles.
I reached out to Dance Magazine last fall wondering if they’d be open to a sort of oral history of La Cage from the point of view of some of the Cagelles, as a way of celebrating their work on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the show. To my great happiness, they said yes, and three wonderful performers from the show, David Engel, Dennis Callahan, and Dan O’Grady, agreed to talk to me.
That article came out in mid-March. (Check it out!) But as I was writing it, I felt like I was perhaps not giving David, Dennis, and Dan the space they deserved. So below you’ll find a lot more. I hope at the very least it brings back a lot of happy memories for the guys, their fellow Cagelles and everyone in the La Cage family.
Special thanks to David Engel, who gave me virtually all of the photos you’ll see here. They are tremendous!
Anything good in the text comes from the guys and their generosity. Any errors are absolutely my own.
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