Private lives on parade

Douglas Hodge laughs when you ask him how it feels to be on stage as a woman. 'I wouldn't have thought I was anyone's first choice to play a woman in an all-singing, all-dancing gay musical. But I'm having a ball.'

Hodge is squeezing his manly body into the curve-hugging diva frocks of Albin, the transvestite heroine of La Cage Aux Folles whose anthem, I Am What I Am, turned into the coming out anthem for a generation. With a book by Harvey (Torch Song Trilogy) Fierstein, La Cage Aux Folles became a celebration of gay pride.

Philip Quast, who plays Albin's 'husband' Georges, acknowledges that the show's history carries a sense of responsibility. 'There's definitely an element of the audience who saw it 30 years ago and for them it symbolises a special spirit, the first time they felt strong. It's very special to them - and I find that very moving.' Hodge agrees. 'Our musical director told me he used to carry around the lyrics of I Am What I Am in his pocket when he was 15. It was that important to him; it made him feel loud and proud.'

Though it's well-known from its French and US film versions, this new Cage is very much based on Jean Poiret's original stage play. And though both Hodge and Quast are quick to laud the show's past, they are eager to point out that it's no dusty period piece.

The show's dramatic thrust comes from the dilemma that Albin and Georges find themselves in when the son they have raised, the product of a drunken fling between Georges and a showgirl some 20 years previously, announces that he's bringing his fiancée - and her homophobic right-wing politician of a father - home to meet them.

All of a sudden, the secret, selfprotective world that Georges and Albin have created for themselves is exposed to brutal scrutiny.

'I think that their story, looking at whether a gay couple can be good parents and how you can keep making love to the same person for 20 years and more... those themes are as relevant now as when they were written,' says Hodge.

Even so, the temptation has been resisted to update the setting. La Cage Aux Folles remains rooted in the giddy twilight world of 1970s St Tropez. For Quast, that's a deliberate attempt to conjure up a world away from the real world.

'All the lyrics and the language are about creating an environment where there are no rules. Their lives are like a private club.'

To capture that louche feel, the Menier Chocolate Factory has been made over into a faux Folles, with eight glamorous Cagelles dancers ('they're all men apart from one woman, but you can never tell them apart,' laughs Quast) getting up close and personal with the punters. It's a show where the camp factor is ramped up, with laughter, however bittersweet, high on the agenda.