The Laurence Olivier Award-winning musical La Cage Aux Folles is to shake its feather boa and sequin-clad behind for the last time at the Playhouse theatre on 2 January.
Fittingly Douglas Hodge, who opened in the production when it premiered at the Menier Chocolate Factory in 2007 and returned when it transferred to the Playhouse in 2008, will be the final performer to don the lead role’s glamorous gowns as he returns to close the show from 30 November.
The musical, which won the awards for Best Musical Revival and Best Actor in a Musical – for Hodge – at the 2009 Laurence Olivier Awards, tells the story of drag club owner Georges and his partner and leading performer Albin who, when Georges’s son returns home and announces a visit from his right wing soon-to-be-in-laws, are forced into a very swift change of lifestyle.
The role of Albin is currently being played by Torchwood star John Barrowman, and has previously been played during the show’s successful West End run by Roger Allam and Graham Norton. Barrowman is joined on stage by Simon Burke as Georges, who will be replaced on 30 November by Denis Lawson, the actor who first performed the role at the Playhouse theatre.
Following La Cage Aux Folles’s London closure, the show will pack up its glitter and glitz and head to Broadway, where it is due to open in 2010.
No subsequent production has been announced for the Playhouse theatre.
MA