La Cage aux Folles bows this month at Pasadena Playhouse

Sam Pinkleton is sitting in a high-ceilinged white room in his Los Angeles home revealing his fears. The Tony-nominated director— he most recently directed Oh, Mary on Broadway—is currently directing a production of La Cage aux Folles which is set to open on November 12 at the Pasadena Playhouse. And ’s nervous about doing the play justice.

"La Cage is one of the only grand old musicals that puts queer people at the center, and that has always kind of terrified me," he says. "When I started working on La Cage, I was like, I can't do this. It's too important. It's too special. I don't wanna fuck it up. It doesn't need me."

Pinkleton exhales: "I don't want to break this precious thing."

La Cage aux Folles, with music and lyrics by Jerry Herman and book by Harvey Fierstein, first bowed on Broadway at the Palace Theater in 1983. Since then, there have been two Broadway revivals and three national tours. The musical, which revolves around Georges and Albain, à middle-aged gay couple whose 24-year-old son, Jean-Michel, turns up for a visit with his fiancé and her conservative parents in tow, has won 11 Tony Awards. La Cage was also adapted into the 1996 film, The Birdcage, starring Nathan Lane and Robin Williams, and the play's end-of-act-one song "I Am What I Am" has become one of the most epochal queer anthems of the past half century.

Pinkleton calls the show, “a motherfucking comedy.”

The humor in La Cage may be flamboyant and unrestrained, but it is by no means simple.

"The show is like a cupcake with a razor blade inside of it," says Pinkleton. "There's a bite to its effervescence because the joy of this community and of these people was earned and was fought for."

Kevin Cahoon, who plays Albain, shares Pinkleton's appreciation for the show's complexity.

"It's not a subversive, political piece of theater," Cahoon says, "but it is in a very sneaky way."

It is the societal undercurrent of intolerance and anti-LGBT rhetoric that has contributed to La Cage's lasting resonance. It is also what has given the queer characters of La Cage grit.

"Albain's a steel magnolia," Cahoon says. "On the outside, he's presenting his one thing, but inside he has no choice but to be tough. He knows he's an outsider. He knows most people look at him as an alien. He puts a little more mascara on to get through the day."

While Pinkleton admits that he "can't be a mouthpiece for all queer people and I desperately don't want to," he notes that La Cage speaks volumes in terms of representing "a lot of different roads into what it means to be a queer person."

"It's not just one thing," says Pinkleton. "You're going to see a lot of different expressions of queerness and gender."

Cheyenne Jackson, who plays Georges, calls La Cage "a pretty powerful piece of history."

When asked what he hopes audiences will take away from the show, Pinkleton quips "I hope they leave talking about anything other than where their car is parked."

He smiles, then adds: "Maybe way, way, way deep down, they're like, huh, I'm thinking differently about one person in my life-whether it is my kid, or my sister, or the mailman or somebody I saw once in the line at Ralph's. Maybe I made some judgments a little too fast.'"

pasadenaplayhouse.org