Billy Porter To Star In All-Black Version of ‘La Cage Aux Folles’
Billy Porter will return to Broadway as Albin in an all-Black revival of the musical La Cage Aux Folles, it was announced Tuesday. It’s part of a slate of shows that will head to the Great White Way from fall through next summer, per a Deadline report.
The play debuted in France in 1973. It is one of the first musicals to center on a gay relationship. Georges is the manager of a gay club in St. Tropez and Albin, his partner, is the club’s main drag performer, as the character of Zaza. It’s many adaptations include the 1996 movie The Birdcage starring Robin Williams as Armand Goldman (the Georges character) and Nathan Lane as Albert (Albin).
Porter, 55, is a two-time Tony Award, Grammy and Emmy winner. He most recently starred in Pose, which ran for 3 seasons on FX. Porter won an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for playing Pray Tell on the show, the first openly gay Black man to do so.
La Cage Aux Folles is one of four productions under the New York City Center Encores! banner, which includes accessible $28 ticket options. The season opens on Oct. 29 with Bat Boy: The Musical, based on a fake tabloid article written in the ’90s about a boy who was half-bat, half-human. La Cage Aux Folles will run June 17 – 28 next year.
Per the announcement, “This Tony-winning musical of love, family, and acceptance was the first to center its story around a gay couple—who happen to run the greatest drag show on the French Riviera. Directed by Robert O’Hara with Guest Music Director Joseph Joubert, the Encores! production features an all-Black cast led by Emmy, Grammy, and three-time Tony Award-winning artist Billy Porter as the fabulous Albin, bringing a new dimension to the show’s core themes of identity and belonging. With a book by Harvey Fierstein and music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, the tuneful score includes the delightful duet ‘With You on My Arm’ and prideful anthem ‘I Am What I Am.'”
Porter is currently in London, starring in the U.K. revival of Cabaret and making his directorial debut in This Bitter Earth, which follows a Black writer and his white activist lover through the ups and downs of their relationship.
Porter said in a statement, “Harrison David Rivers has written a searingly poignant and necessary play about love and loss through the lens of the fraying American Democratic experiment. Simple. Complex. Direct and filled with compassion all at once. I’m thrilled to be a part of bringing this very special piece to life.”
No word yet on any additional casting for La Cage Aux Folles.
