La Cage aux Folles (New York City Center Encores!)
Few musicals occupy quite the same place in the American theatrical imagination as "La Cage aux Folles." Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein’s 1983 landmark arrived disguised as an old-fashioned musical comedy—complete with farce, mistaken identities, and melodies that seemed to float effortlessly into the ear—yet it carried within it a quietly radical vision of queer domesticity. More than four decades later, that vision remains startlingly potent. At a moment when drag artists once again find themselves the targets of political opportunism and manufactured moral panic, Robert O’Hara’s exuberant New York City Center Encores! revival feels less like an exercise in nostalgia than a reaffirmation of the show’s enduring conviction that family is defined not by conformity but by love. [more]