THE BIRD CAGE. Two-act comedy. Elaine May’s film script reconstructed and directed by Barrie Howard. Choreography Raine Waring. Presented by Constantia Theatre Players. At The Masque Theatre until 2 December.
SHEILA CHISHOLM reviews
This camp comedy is director Barrie Howard’s adaptation of American Laurel Award screenwriter Elaine May’s script for her 1996 movie – The Bird Cage. A salacious plot, May sourced from Harvey Fierstein’s French, Broadway musical farce La Cage aux Folles (the cage of mad women). Hence main characters are named Armand (Mark Wilkes); Albert-pronounced Alber (David Waugh) and Agador (Spartacus) (Blaine Coetzee).
Stage in three sections
However, being a Miami setting, other role players go by common anglicised ones. There is 20 year-old Val (Mitchell Christy), Armand and Albert’s son; Val’s 18 year-old fiancée Barbara (Laurie Todes) and her super-conservative parents Senator and Mrs Keeley (Garth Coetzee, Ann Coetzee). As well as The Coochie Girls drag queens (Conrad Lihou, Dean Shuttleworth). Various actors take on useful minor roles.
Howard’s set concept sections off The Masque stage into three. On audience left is the canopied entrance to Armand’s night club – The Bird Cage. Several vignettes take place on audience right. Between these two is Armand’s well-designed split level, open plan living area. That’s where most action happens.
The Bird Cage opens when the colourfully bewigged Coochie Girls go through choreographer Raine Waring’s repetitive, vapid, wrist-twisting, gyrating hips moves.
This scene gives way to the plot centred around Val’s engagement to Barbara, finding parental support for their marriage and arranging a meeting between both sets of parents. Armand is Jewish, owns The Bird Cage Night Club and lives with Albert. Senator Keeley promotes traditional family morality and publically declares antipathy towards being gay, approval for the young couple’s marriage is unlikely.
Coochie Girls
Programme notes indicate director Howard compiled this script from May’s movie. Not the wisest method on which to build a play. Especially one this sensitive. One which could be construed as an attack on homosexuality and Christianity. Fortunately, by keeping a tight rein on his actors delivery and behaviour, Howard (just) avoided that problem.
The technique employed for filming differs from that for staging a play. A camera’s roving eye slips seamlessly from one scene to the next. Not so staging a play. Therefore, when yet another Coochie Girls episode was performed in front of a gauze curtain and stage crews swopped the umpteenth scene, the lamentable result was a slow-paced, bitty show.
None-the-less high moments came from Wilkes, Waugh and Blaine Coetzee’s commendably humorous comic characterisations. Their true professionalism “lifted” audience attention back to on stage happenings when, after yet another pause, they sensed interest wavering. This trio also brought out May’s message that love and honesty is all important.
The scene where Waugh impersonates Val’s biological mother, as well as Blaine’s acrobatic/mincing house-aid cum cook act offer good reasons for seeing The Bird Cage.
What: The Bird Cage
Where: The Masque Theatre, Muizenberg, Cape Town
When: Until 2 December, 2017
Book tickets: www.computicket.co.za
WS
