La Cage Aux Folles
So for my birthday (which isn't for another four days but this is my Spring Break so this is when we did it) my family took me to a Broadway show of my choice. Well, sort of, because it had to be one of the ones offering half-price tickets that we could stand in line for, but that's fine, because we ended up with my first choice from that list, La Cage aux Folles. And we got four tickets, orchestra seating, for $288 dollars. What?!
As you can see from the above, La Cage was utterly and completely fantastic. Harvey Fierstein was playing a role he wrote thirty years ago, the fabulous Zaza/Albin (he's above, with the boa). Christopher Sieber was incredible. And, and, and, I'm a dork, but the writing of this show! Even my brother, who's a bit of a grump and the most critical person I have ever seen, was raving about it.
For those of you who don't know, La Cage aux Folles (translated either as "The Birdcage" or "The Cage of Crazies") is about a family. There's Georges, a man who owns a transvestite burlesque club, his lover Albin, who also stars in the burlesque as Zaza, and Georges son, Jean-Michel. Jean-Michel, unfortunately, has fallen in love with a girl, which would be bad enough ("Traitor! Judas! Heterosexual!") but what's worse is that she's the daughter of the most bigoted asshole of a politician in San Tropez, the leader of the Tradition, Family and Morality party, who has made it his personal crusade to shut down all the gay and transvestite clubs in town. Jean-Michel invites his lady-love's parents over for dinner.
Hilarity, and lots of gorgeous costumes, ensue.
Highlights, highlights. Every face that Harvey Fierstein has ever made. The hilarious fisherman creepin' on every shot where they're going to kiss. When Monsieur Dindon ("Excuse me, Mr. Dingdong?") snarls, "What parents? All I see are two transvestite homosexuals!" and Albin raises a delicate hand and goes, "Ahem? One transvestite homosexual," and Georges nods and gestures to himself, "and one plain homosexual."
Harvey's delivery on "Now, Georges, without threats or tantrums. If she comes? You die." was so fucking fantastic that it made my brother give one of his super loud shout-laughs and had me cackling for ages. Uuuu it was so GOOD! I highly, highly highly recommend it to everyone ever. And if you do what we did, you'll have to stand in line for an hour but man, tickets are so much cheaper!
And now, to continue this trend of Gorgeous Costumes, I'm going to the Art Museum in Philly to see their new costuming exhibit, which is awesomely called The Peacock Male: Exuberance and Extremes in Masculine Dress. BUT FIRST having some breakfast and then typing up the bits of Chasing Mercury that I wrote on the train yesterdaaaay
oh god tonight and tomorrow i have to do so much homework, shh shh i am in outrageous clothes heaven