The theater queen puts the pot-au-feu to get back on! 51 years after its creation by Jean Poiret, the mythical play “La Cage aux Folles” offers itself a second youth with the start of a musical that will see the light of day in December 2025 in Paris. In the collective imagination, “La Cage aux Folles” remains a monument to French cinema thanks to the tasty portraits made by Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Serrault characters from Renato and Albin, the couple in the heart of this story full of feathers, panache and humor. Huge success in France and Italy, the feature film by Édouard Molinaro, with ENNIO MORRICOE at the composition, even exported – we know less – to the United States where “the Cage aux Folles” will win the Golden Globe for the best foreign film and a triple native nomination. Just that! His status of cult work will earn him to be adapted in Broadway in 1983 by Harvey Proudestein on music by Jerry Herman. It is from this musical, haloed by six Tony Awards, that the famous song “I am what I am” drawn, immortalized for posterity by Gloria Gaynor!
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“It was his dream”
Given this rich history, the return of “La Cage aux Folles” in the Light city, there all that has started, therefore makes sense. After a first version in 1999 at the Mogador Theater, which did not experience the expected success, it is the prestigious theater of the Châtelet which will host this new production whose staging will be provided by Olivier Py. With a face well known to the audience at the head: Laurent Lafitte! The 51-year-old actor and ex-fellow of the French comedy will slip into the shoes of Albin, alias Zaza. The idea was born on the set of the film “Le Molière Imaginaire”, released in February in the cinema. “” We often talked about musicals. In his lodge, Laurent listened to it constantly and I listened all the time to the opera and the musical. We mentioned “La Cage aux Folles”, he told me that it was his dream, it was also mine, but at the time we did not have a theater that could offer it to us »Confides Olivier Py to Parisian. Coup de fate: a few months later, the director takes the lead in the Châtelet Theater and the place is therefore all found!
Rumped in the art of singing and dance thanks to his studies at the Guildford School of Acting in London, Laurent Lafitte appears as a whimsical and flamboyant Zaza on the first photographs shared by the daily. “” Zaza is first of all a theater character, an artist … It is much more supported in the musical, we see the cabaret that we do not see in the play and so little in the film. That's the good idea “Explains Olivier Py, who underlines the richness of the play which was somewhat shaded by the success of the film:” I imagine it as a big family show, for Christmas. It is very great intelligent, deep entertainment, comparable to “miserable” because it is for everyone and at the same time, it does not say anything … France has shunned a little the musical “La Cage”, because of the film and the play, precisely. It was confused, but the public will not be able to make the difference ». If the casting must continue around Laurent Lafitte, the dates of representations of the musical are already known: meeting from December 5, 2025 to January 10, 2026!
