LGBTQ Discussion

Copyright ©2010

2011, Christopher Sieber and Harvey Fierstein at the final curtain call on closing night of La Cage Aux Folles

There is a growing list of identities that expand ideas about sexuality and gender. Naming some of these identities helps forward important discussions, and naming also gives ownership and appropriate credit to communities of people. There is danger in assigning "labels", though, when it comes to relating to those around you, and the best way to understand individual identity is to allow others to tell you what you should know. Terms used below are historical.

Long before Broadway, gay pride made its play upon the stage, especially in drag shows. Both male and female actors performed as characters of the opposite sex, cross-dressing to complete the transformation. Shows varied in quality, and a study of them could easily take a full semester. As we are discussing Broadway musicals—especially dance—and their reciprocal relationship with an immediate and societal audience, we will limit our exploration to specific shows and individuals and the interplay of performers with their audiences.

There exists a stereotype of the gay male: He walks with a bit of an extra hip action, is fanatical about his attire and loves show tunes. This portrait is, of course, outrageously general and ridiculously ignorant. Sexual orientation has little to do with music preference or hip movement.

Still, there has always been an intimate bond between many members of the gay community and Broadway musicals. Individuals have particularly empathized with strong characters that are outlandish, irrepressible and magnificently overt in the personal expression of their out-of-the-norm identities.

Author Thomas Dukes offers another possible explanation for Broadway’s gay fan base:

The musical theater made male participation in song and dance—activities identified with highbrow effeminacy in many parts of American society—acceptable in a popular entertainment form that reinforced the validity of heterosexual romance. Thus, gay (as well as straight) men could engage in culturally suspect behavior and win approval for doing so. (2002, p. 1)

Around the theatre, there is a general knowledge about most of the homosexual community, but so many are married, and so many of those who are married have children, that it’s almost a case of ‘only their hairdresser knows for sure’…Generally, the homosexual doesn’t have to hide quite as much as he once did. (Goldman, 2006, p. 235)

These words, originally written by director/author William Goldman in 1969, describe an issue that would later prove to be deadly to many Americans: secret (“closet”) homosexuality. It is important to remember that prejudicial acts against people of non-heterosexual, non-binary gender (man/woman) identities continue today. In the 1950s, homosexuals were considered deviant. Individuals revealing a homosexual identity were routinely blacklisted in their careers and most suffered extreme emotional and/or physical abuse.

New York City became a haven for gays fleeing conservative home states. Broadway musicals offered a safe destination, a place where performers on stage could do or say almost anything, and the audience could imagine themselves doing the same.

The gay community was well represented on the creative staff of many Broadway shows. Until quite recently, however, the majority of gay individuals in the Broadway industry—cacooned in a creative, liberal-leaning field—were no more likely to reveal their sexual identity than those individuals living in right-wing, conservative environments. “Coming out” was not a term or an action in the 1950s.

Fear kept gay individuals in the closet.

On Broadway, where homosexuals were strongly represented in creative teams, stage crews and casts, fear of repercussions—personal, professional and commercial—kept many individuals from laying claim to their sexual identity. This fear of exposure may be one reason that homosexual themes were almost non-existent on Broadway. Like many writers, composers and lyricists belonging to minorities, a desire to assimilate into white American life kept many from writing about what they knew best.

The American musical would be inconceivable—in fact, it never would have existed—without the contributions of African Americans, Jews, and homosexuals, but whereas Fiddler on the Roof put Jewish rituals onstage, and The Wiz had an all-black production team and cast, even by the mid-1970s gay characters were nowhere to be found on the Broadway stage (Maslon, 2010).

Jerome Robbins struggled with his sexual identity for his entire life. His struggles were so torturous, that they often took him to a psychoanalyst’s office. In fact, it has been suggested that the House Un-American Activities Committee threatened to “out” Robbins, and his fear of the ramifications of exposure was so great that he was forced to give names to the committee.

Michael Bennett married his muse Donna McKechnie in spite of his homosexuality. They were separated a few months later.

Prior to the 1980s, there were few gay characters in musicals.

Characters in drag were more common and were seen on Broadway as early as 1917, when the popular drag performer, Bert Savoy performed in Miss 1917. The next year (s)he was seen in the 1918 edition of the Ziegfeld Follies.

The 1918 military revue, Yip! Yip! Yaphank! featured soldiers in drag and blackface.

There are many cases where subtext or songs held subtle homosexual messages. There were also song-and-dance numbers, such as “Erbie Fitch’s Twitch” from Redhead (1959), in which the lyrics are not subtle, but the fact that the woman in the number is auditioning for a show within the show, dressed as a man, singing about two women, creates enough confusion that the audience may or may not catch the gay theme!

Video: “Erbie Fitch’s Twitch”

La Cage was not the first musical to introduce a homosexual couple:

Three months before La Cage aux Folles opened, Dance a Little Closer offered a pair of airline stewards who actually asked a clergy man to marry them, leading to a full-scale musical scene on this matter a generation before gay marriage became even a controversy. (Mordden, 2004, p. 3)

The men were supporting characters, and, unfortunately, the show closed on opening night.

La Cage aux Folles was yet another show-within-a-show musical. In this case, the show (within the show) happened to be a drag show in a club in Saint-Tropez. La Cage “contained all the ingredients for success…glamour and glitz, a showstopping tune, and the presence of a grande dame to hold it all together. Only this time the grande dame was a man, the glamour and glitz shone from a chorus line of drag queens, and the showstopping tune, ‘I Am What I Am,’ became the unofficial anthem of the gay rights movement” (Harbin, Marra & Schanke, 2005, p. 192).

The presentation of the gay couple—the leads in the musical—was unusual in that their homosexual relationship was set up in the story as not unusual. Albin and Georges are shown as an integral and accepted part of their community. The audience is led into the nightclub, La Cage aux Folles [translation: Birdcage]; and we see a drag show. Albin is the star performer, an aging, yet dedicated drag queen in all her glory. Club owner, Georges, provides the emotional stability in the relationship. Together for 20 years, the two men have shared a life, and the raising of Georges’ son [the product of a one-night stand.] All is well until the son, Jean-Michel comes home for a visit…

Now in his twenties, the straight … Jean-Michel would like to get married, too. But his intended, Anne, is the offspring of particularly priggish parents, Monsieur Dindon and his painfully subjugated wife. The Dindons are pillars of rectitude; indeed, Monsieur Dindon is a leader of the Tradition, Family, and Morality Party, whose express aim is to shut down the drag shows in Saint-Tropez. Justifiably worried that the Dindons won’t understand his family, Jean-Michel turns on Albin, the only mother he has ever known. How can he explain to the Dindons that his maman is not only a man but a man who makes his living looking like a hybrid of Cher and Dolly Parton costumed by Bob Mackie? (Als, 2010, p. 1)

Set aside the gender of Albin and the Cagelles (the drag show chorus “girls”) and the show is pure traditional musical theatre. “The musical followed the tradition of the ‘straight’ musical by being conservative, respectful of traditional family values, and blatantly commercial” (Dukes, 2002, p. 2). The story followed universal themes of well-ripened love and parental heartache. What could be more universal than a 20-year old son who is ashamed of his parents? Or a spouse in a two decade relationship who needs to hear reassuring words of love?

With life at La Cage aux Folles firmly established as the normed life of the show, it becomes clear that Jean-Michel’s accommodation of bigotry is the perversion that threatens the family. The crack in the family bond comes from within its ranks, not from the bigoted Dindons.

The chorus of “showgirls” worked as hard as any set of Vegas chorines, showing not only their ability to embody their femininity; they also changed costumes and dance styles throughout the show, all the while maintaining character.

The dance in the show represents the freedom of the performers to be who they want to be, to express what they wish to express, and to receive acceptance and tribute (applause) for their bold actions.

La Cage stands out from other shows for the riotous nature of its drag-club setting, with its “notorious and dangerous Cagelles.”

This was the kind of dance theater that musicals used to excel in—not Dream Ballets or violence but sheer joy, getting more out of rhythm then the lyrics and music can by themselves. Yet the ensemble’s neatest surprise lay not in a dance but during the Cagelles’ curtain call. As a little white dumpster traveled from stage right to left, the twelve dancers discarded their wigs and dresses, dropped them into the bin, turned to face us: and, lo, two of them really were women. (Mordden, 2004, pp. 5-6)

The gender of two of the chorus “girls” was not the only twist of identity in the show. Concerns regarding audience response to the musical provoked rather interesting actions offstage:

· George Hearn was not permitted to appear in his show costume (in drag) for the Tony Awards performance of “I Am What I Am.” Instead, as you see in the video below, he wore a tuxedo.

· The 1983 La Cage was “sensitive to heterosexual sensibilities and potential audience response:

The boy [Jean-Michel] and girl [Anne] got to kiss. The boy even got to grope his future mother-in-law’s breast. But, for the two principals, there was not so much as a peck on the cheek.

“That was deliberate,” says the director Arthur Laurents. “I knew it was very important that there shouldn’t be so much as a kiss between those two guys or half the audience would have walked out.” On both Broadway and in London, heterosexual actors were cast as the two leads, and they were eager in the programme notes to thank their wives and kids. It was a typical Broadway compromise. (Steyn, 2000, p. 201)

Video: La Cage aux Folles

The original production of La Cage aux Folles cost about $5 million, with most of the money going into lavish, hand beaded and jeweled costumes and spectacular sets to match.

There have been two revivals of La Cage. The first opened in 2004 and ran for 229 performances. The second revival opened in April 2010 and ran for 433 performances.

What makes the director Terry Johnson’s utterly absorbing revival of “La Cage aux Folles” (at the Longacre) so subversive is the way he insures that the straight characters in the musical have no real power on the stage. His method is as direct as the plot of the show, which is based on a 1973 play by the French writer Jean Poiret, with a book by Harvey Fierstein and music and lyrics by Jerry Herman. We're on the French Riviera--the tacky part, where some night-club floor shows still operate under the influence of Josephine Baker's late-career silver costumes and paillettes. Georges (Kelsey Grammer) runs a joint called La Cage aux Folles...[and] handles the floor show's temperamental, high-strung star, Albin (Douglas Hodge), who performs, under the name Zaza, in exaggerated showgirl drag. Albin is hopelessly in love with Georges, to whom he has been married for twenty years and with whom he has reared a son...

[Albin is] the kind of man who sings to his dressing-table mirror, “Once again I’m a little depressed / By the tired old face that I see / Once again it is time to be someone / Who’s anyone other than me. . . . / I apply one great stroke of mascara / To my rather limp upper lash! / And I can cope again! / Good God! There’s hope again!”?...

Grammer’s Georges is a paragon of restraint and compassion. His only misstep is a limp, swinging wrist at the beginning of the performance. He doesn’t need to “act” gay; it’s part of his character. And we learn more about that character as we watch him listen to Jean-Michel’s complaints about the household and about Albin. Tears fill Georges’s eyes, and ours, too, as we realize that his great sadness as a parent is not that his son is straight—there are a couple of perfunctory jokes on that subject—but that his son is conventional, and sort of mean in his conventionality: hasn’t Georges raised him not only to tolerate difference but to be oblivious of it? Still, Albin loves Jean-Michel more than he can say, so when Georges suggests that he butch it up and pose as an uncle for the Dindons’ visit, he agrees, which occasions the “Rose’s Turn” of “La Cage”: “I Am What I Am.” Hodge not only sings the song credibly (his pipes aren’t big, but they’re expressive); he treats it as an aria of self-discovery—Albin is trying to earn the right to be the person he is.

Has Broadway ever had a harder-working chorus? The six men who make up Les Cagelles—the showgirls who back Zaza when they’re not entertaining audiences on their own—perform Lynne Page’s complicated and satisfyingly theatrical choreography as if they were born to it. Nick Adams, Sean A. Carmon, Nicholas Cunningham, Sean Patrick Doyle, Logan Keslar, and Terry Lavell are the names of these performers, and Johnson treats them like stars: each is allowed his own distinct personality onstage. Johnson also gives Robin De Jesús—who plays Jacob, Albin’s maid, like Rosie Perez in male drag—a great deal of depth. (In the original, 1983 Broadway production, a black actor, William Thomas, Jr., performed the role as though he were Butterfly McQueen.)

The original production was all brassy orchestration, sparkly costumes, and shallow characterizations. As I remember it, the director of that staging, Arthur Laurents, tipped it in the direction of the Dindons—the thrust of the show was Georges and Albin’s need for the Dindons’ approval, and hence the straight world drove the events onstage. Johnson goes a different route; he focusses, instead, on the heart of the material—whether Georges and Albin’s relationship will survive the emotional and political rupture that their son has instigated. Like John Doyle, in his direction of Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd” and “Company” a few years ago, Johnson strips the Broadway from “La Cage aux Folles” and gives the text, and the actors, a new dimension. His production is not the heterosexual’s fantasia of gay life; it’s something real, felt, and deep.

As we have seen over the duration of this course, the relationship of the Broadway musical to its audience is one of the most important contributors to a show’s success or failure. Apart from commercial considerations, there is also the matter of artistic concerns. Does the audience get the intended message? As Graciela Daniele said, “The audience is the last collaborator” (cited in Ahrens, 2006, p. 57).

On stage, where gay heroes are too seldom welcomed, strong female leads have provided identity to gay men. Icons such as Ethel Merman, Mary Martin, Chita Rivera and others have long been appropriated by gay men,

Although these women also have large heterosexual followings, their cult status in the gay male community has extended to their being impersonated by drag queens. Accounting for that cult following is difficult, but it seems to be made up of equal parts of admiration for talent and admiration for the ways these women remake themselves as musical comedy stars, defying conventional notions about what constitutes power and beauty. Because they frequently present themselves as larger than--or at least different from--everyday life, they inspire admiration from others outside the norm. (Dukes, 2002, p. 2)

Lesbians, though not as numerous as gay men—or perhaps more closeted than gay men—also work in the Broadway industry. Bob Fosse spoke bluntly about women on Broadway: "Mary Martin was Broadway's biggest closet king. Everyone thought Ethel (Merman) was butch and maybe a lesbian, but she wasn't. And everyone thought that lovely little Mary was Miss Femme, and she was -- except next to her gay husband. In other words, don't judge a star by her cover" (cited in Kenrick, 2010, “Becoming Visible).

The politics of musicals directly reflects the current level of societal acceptance of any given diversity. Though we in the New York City area can count on a certain level of liberalism in our audiences, the millions of tourists that flood Times Square each year have much to say about what will play and what will flop. The tide of acceptance moves rather too slowly for my taste, but it is moving.

When John Glines thanked his gay lover during a Tony acceptance speech in 1983 [“and lastly, but most importantly, to the one person who believed and followed the dream from the very beginning, who never said … it can’t be done, I refer to my partner and my lover, Lawrence Lane”], it set off a firestorm of controversy, including death threats. Within two years, similar speeches on awards shows caused no fuss at all. (Kenrick, 2008, “Out of the Shadows)

Bob Fosse—notoriously heterosexual—evolved in his view of homosexual dancers and their performance on stage. His female dancers were invariably tall, long-legged and sensual. Eventually…

Bob allowed the same sexuality for the men. Those who were gay he allowed to act gay. This was a break with general practice, where choreographers tried to make their male dancers look and act like cops. “When I first started choreographing,” he said, “if I thought someone was camping on stage, or indicating they were gay, soft, or effeminate, I would stop it and make them all be macho.” Now he decided to stop doing that. “It was the first time I never said, ‘Don’t be so minty,’ and I found that I got better performances.” (Gottfried, 1990, p. 243)

The 1980s brought strength and solidarity to the gay rights movement, but a measure of this solidarity came from a devastating wave of illness. Gay men were dying in days or weeks of an illness that attacked them with horrifying symptoms. Nicknamed "the gay plague," this appalling disease was dubbed "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome" in 1982. The death sentence that accompanied a diagnosis of AIDS and the fact that, initially, it seemed to target only gay men, renewed with a fury the fear and bias of American society against gays.

With a large number of gay men both on and off stage on Broadway, the illness became a nightmarish part of life in the industry. The ranks of dancers, actors, singers, directors, choreographers, composers, writers and lyricists were decimated, and no one was left untouched. Everyone knew one, two, three, or ten people who had died a terrible death from the illness.

AIDS had other consequences. It played a major role in the closing of La Cage. The year after the show opened on Broadway, two major American stars, Rock Hudson and Liberace, died of AIDS, making public a previously hidden disease alongside the news of their hidden sexual identities. Their popularity with both hetero- and homosexual audiences brought humanity at last to the devastation of AIDS. For La Cage, according to Steyn, the same publicity that brought much needed attention to the AIDS crisis also “reduced the appeal of the show” (2000, p. 201). I imagine it was difficult to laugh at gay antics during this harrowing period.

Another devastating result of AIDS and the fear that it struck in the hearts of Americans was the election of Ronald Reagan, a known homophobe [person who is fearful of the idea and/or practice of homosexuality].

It took several years for Broadway shows to recover from the blow struck by AIDS. Broadway was busy dealing with the reality of friends dying and the daily caretaking and health issues that accompanied each diagnosis. The tragic loss of some of Broadway’s best writing talent, coupled with society’s renewed prejudice, made it unlikely that gay themed shows would achieve any measure of success.

It wasn’t until the 1990s that...

...gay playwrights began to create the believable, three dimensional characters that the public needed to dramatize and define the AIDS nightmare…William Finn's March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland depicted gay men facing life, love and AIDS with the support of family and friends. That circle of friends included the first openly lesbian couple to appear as featured characters in a major Broadway musical. Combined into a two-act evening, Falsettos (1992) surprised everyone by winning Tony Awards for Best Book and Score, running for more than a year and turning a solid profit. From The Black Crook to Falsettoes, the musical had come a long way. (Kenrick, 2008, “AIDS”)

Plays such as Tony Kushner’s Angels in America also confronted, in dramatic detail, the impact of AIDS on those diagnosed and the people that love them.

Full camp and glorious double entrendre came back in 1995 with Victor/Victoria, an adaptation of the 1982 film starring Julie Andrews. Julie Andrews recreated her role as a starving nightclub singer who pretends to be a man, so that she can perform in drag (dressed as a woman) to earn money. Wit, camp and comedic timing work together to poke fun at gender and sexual identity stereotypes. Many layers of messages ran through the musical.

An intense Apache-dance was performed by the chorus, with couples of diverse sexual orientation passionately flinging their partners into lifts and down to the ground. The Apache made an exciting visual point: passion is passion regardless of gender or sexual identity. It is particularly electrifying to see the strength of male dancers equally matched against the strength of their male partners.

The tango between Julie Andrews' “Victor”—who is still trying to prove “he” is a man—and the character Norma Cassidy, the quintessential dumb blond female (played by Rachel York, one of my favorite actresses), was more subtle. See if you can pinpoint the male/female stereotypes highlighted by the dance:

Video: Victor/Victoria (1995) – "The Tango"

“While several performers have won Tonys for roles that have involved cross dressing, only two have won for performing in roles in which the character is actually a member of the opposite sex: Mary Martin in the title role of Peter Pan (1955) and Harvey Fierstein as Edna Turnblad in Hairspray (2003)” (Tonyawards.com, 2011, "Facts & Trivia").

[ Hairspray will be discussed later in our course.]

Winner of 6 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Choreography (Jerry Mitchell, who also directed), Best Original Score (Cyndi Lauper), and Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Billy Porter), Kinky Boots opened on April 4, 2013. Kinky Boots is based on a film that was based on a true story. A man inherits a struggling shoe factory from his deceased father. As the factory nears bankruptcy, a call from a drag queen inquiring about custom-made boots for her show turns into a subsidiary company that saves the factory. Though they come from worlds that are very different, the man (Charlie) and the drag queen (Lola) realize that their problems are very much the same. Both have struggled with earning their fathers' pride.

This project was 5 years in the making, so the creative staff and producers couldn't have known that the opening of the show would coincide with 2 gay rights cases' coming before the Supreme Court of the United States. The connection between the universal themes forwarded by the musical and the civil rights forwarded by the Supreme Court decisions are staggering.

Here is a clip from the musical

Video: KINKY BOOTS (Broadway) - "Everybody Say Yeah" [LIVE @ The 2013 Tony Awards]