Mainly on Directing by Arthur Laurents (read more books .TXT) 📕

He did it, and it actually worked. So did the transformation of his “Tonight, La Cage aux Folles presents the magnificent Zaza” and all its variations into emotional moments. The challenge to bring them off was one of those opportunities that attracted me to musicals. I had a really good time inventing with Gene, and the result was gratifying—not only in what it did for the show but in what it did for Gene and what it did for Gene and me. He loved being in Cage; his wife loved his being in Cage; and he loved me as a friend. He played New York for a year, then the California company for almost a year. A year or so later, he wanted to come back to the New York company. He was so happy rehearsing, so happy working with me again, so happy playing Georges again. And he was good! Unfortunately, he played only one night. He had a heart attack two hours after the performance. His life dwindled after that, but he'd had that triumphant night.

I might have developed those announcements into arias during rehearsal; I should have, because I knew even then that Gene didn't have the big moments he wanted and the character he deserved. Rehearsals aren't used nearly as much as they should be for experimenting. Actually, I did use Cage rehearsals to test how far I could and could not go with moments like a man singing a love song to another man for the first time in a big Broadway musical.

The day I showed the company Gene singing “Song on the Sand” to George, there were no accordion, no strings, no romantic backdrop and lighting; just a rehearsal piano and two actors sitting at a table. But the two were really into the scene—they weren't Gene and George, they were Georges and Albin. Gene might not have been very good at that stage, but he was never self-conscious about playing gay. That's rare, even today. At one point in the song, Albin reaches over for Georges's hand; then Georges puts his over Albin's. With the last note, Albin leans over and kisses Georges's hand. I looked around the rehearsal room: tears were being brushed away. Well, gypsies—what do you expect? But I watched the audiences during that song, Boston audiences: tears were being brushed away. The gypsies always know. If the love is believable to the characters, the audience might not like it or accept it, but they will believe it, no matter what the gender.

A cautionary note about intricate moving scenery in musicals. It can work, sometimes even at first try; but sooner or later, it won't. It will break down and there will be panic. That's where relations with the crew comes in. The first Boston preview of Cage had to be cancelled because the scenic sorcery of the opening didn't work. If the nightclub doors didn't jam as they slid on stage, then they jammed as they rode downstage. They jammed both times at rehearsal the next day. How could we have a performance? How could we not? The show had almost no advance; tickets weren't selling; it would be unfair to the producers to cancel another preview. The doors to the club would have to be cut, and as the revolving buildings slid off, the white curtains would come billowing down and spread across the stage under the glittering Cage marquee. Enough sorcery for anyone.

Not for the crew. They loved the show; they loved the cast, even though, like the Cagelles, it was mainly gay and they couldn't have been straighter. (In Australia, the Cagelles were straight, the crew was gay: that's life down under.) They loved Fritz Holt and they loved me. They begged for one more chance. They were sure they could make those sliding doors work. The cast begged for them to be given their chance; they were sure their crew could bring it off.

When a company is permeated with that kind of love—and it is a kind of love—conflicts disappear, work is a joy, and (no surprise) the show is immeasurably better. It has to be: love's involved. So it was with every company of Cage in this country, in London, in Sydney—and it began with that first company previewing in Boston. I gave the crew that one more chance. The club entrance doors slid on like butter—ecstasy!—and then jammed riding downstage. But no one panicked; the crew was prepared. They pushed the door unit downstage manually; they split the doors, they slid them off—and somehow, God knows how, without their being seen! They were determined it would work, and so it did. It was like being unable to get pregnant and then succeeding only after a baby had been adopted. The next performance, the doors worked mechanically as they were supposed to, and they continued to do so happily ever after.

Triumph, joy, the air shimmering with success: the audience captured by the magic of theatre, aka smoke and mirrors. All the same, no matter how you sliced it and disguised it, La Cage aux Folles was still a show about drag queens who were about to make their entrance in drag singing to the audience that They Were What They Were. Furthermore, the enchantment, the magic had built up their entrance so that expectancy was higher than ever. No amount of smoke and mirrors could disguise the truth that what was coming on stage was drag. And it would have been seen as such if not for the brilliance of the greatest American costume designer of her time: Theoni V. Aldredge.

There is truth and there is theatre truth. Waiting in the wings of the Colonial Theatre in Boston were men in women's robes: drag. That was the truth. What appeared on stage, however, because of the fantasy design of the robes, weren't men or boys or women or