Find out what the critics had to say about Roger Allam’s performance as Albin (Zaza) in La Cage aux Folles at the Playhouse Theatre…
If there were any justice, Allam would be a huge star rather than just one of the best and busiest actors in the game. It’s not just that he can turn his hand to anything – from superbly spoken Shakespearean verse to a harrowing modern drama like Blackbird, from a magnificently corrupt cop in the latest series of Ashes to Ashes to a glorious farce like Boeing Boeing – but he has terrific charisma and sings strongly, too. Whenever he is on stage, you know that you are in the safest of hands and that you will be royally entertained.
For all the sequins, feathers and mascara, the single element that defines La Cage aux Folles is a brief moment of stillness at the head of the show’s principal number, I Am What I Am. Allam is the master of the unspoken, and a single pause is simply heartbreaking.
The story is set in a drag night club called La Cage aux Folles in St. Tropez on the French Riviera, and describes an episode in the lives and loves of a non-traditional family.