The Fire Island Pines Arts Project’s (FIPAP) Labor Day Weekend production, playing at Whyte Hall from September 4 to 6, was a grand and glittering revival of composer and lyricist Jerry Herman and playwright Harvey Fierstein’s “La Cage aux Folles”—the Broadway musical that gave us the post-Stonewall gay anthem “I Am What I Am” that succeeded “Over the Rainbow”—with music direction by Sean Peter Forte, stage direction and design by Glen Wielgus, choreography by Cynthia Murray-Davis, lighting by Timothy Bornt, and costumes coordinated by Rita Horvath. The opening night performance is considered here.
Tom Gamblin and Daniel Charles McDonald made an endearing Albin, AKA the flamboyant Zaza, and Georges, the star and the owner of the eponymous notorious San Tropez nightclub, and embracing this central couple, with all their virtues and all-too-human flaws, is essential to appreciating “La Cage.” Accepted by the townsfolk, their neighbors, for who they are, their assignment is to cope, closer to home, with the serpent’s tooth that their ungrateful child, Jean-Michel—Jeff Ostermueller, singing in an ingratiating lyric tenor-timbred voice—is temporarily turning out to be, now that he’s fallen for Anne—Katie Emerson, every bit the ingénue—daughter of Deputy General of the Tradition, Family and Morality Party Edouard Dindon—John Cassese—and Mme. Dindon—Lise Zinn—both reveling in roles as, respectively, the arch-homophobe, who gets his come-uppance, and his put-upon wife, who comes to see the light.
We relished that delicious frisson when we momentarily think we’re getting a glimpse of McDonald’s Georges, who earlier protested his faithfulness to Albin, having an illicit tête-à-tête with a handsome young man, before we come to realize that the youth is Ostermueller as his son. We gave in to the nostalgia of the touching and romantic “Song on the Sand,” as both McDonald’s solo and McDonald and Gamblin’s duet, recalling the early days of their love. We were awed by Gamblin’s quiet a cappella beginning of “I Am What I Am,” the finale of Act One, as a wounded expression of rejection, before it bloomed into the familiar proud power ballad, and felt for him as he vainly made his best effort to impersonate a mother to Jean-Michel that the Dindons could accept.
Kudos to the fantastic and versatile corps of Cagelles, Sam Arlen as whip-wielding dominatrix Hanna from Hamburg, whose foil is the increasingly-injured stage manager Francis—Steven Alan Black; Adam Sarette as Phaedra; David Ballard as Bitelle; Adam Brown as Odette; and Vonny Celerio as Angelique, augmented by welcome veterans Bob “Rose” Levine as Cherie Grove, interpolating “It’s Today” from “Mame;” and Jack Lichtenstein, as Pandora, a vision in pink frills. Luis Villabon, as Jacob, the outrageous maid, er, butler, made us laugh every time he appeared, whether in one of his mistress Zaza’s gowns, or as Marilyn Monroe or Cher.
The vocal ensemble definitively proved its worth with a rousing “The Best of Times,” with Gamblin backed by Melissa Marlin as restaurant owner Jacqueline, Bob Levine, newcomer Joe Lavine, Mike Hartstein, Teresa Lovito, and Steven Alan Black. Forte’s small orchestra, consisting of Jeremy Clayton, Josh Johnson, Brandon Kaayenbrink, Ryan McNulty, Mary Rodriguez, Rebecca Steinberg, and Jason Wetzel produced a whole Broadway pit orchestra’s-worth of sound.
In-jokes about Rose Levine, Laura Hartstein, and Nicole LaFountaine slyly found their way into the script, and in one scene, Gamblin sported a 545 Beachcomber terry-cloth robe.

photo by Bruce-Michael Gelbert

curtain call (left to right) Lise Zinn, Katie Emerson, Daniel Charles McDonald, Tom Gamblin, Jeff Ostermueller & Luis Villabon

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