George Hamilton feathers nest with 'La Cage' role
George Hamilton's career onstage and screen has spanned the decades. He's gone from being one of Hollywood's final studio-system stars for MGM in the 1950s to recent TV appearances on “Dancing With the Stars” in 2006.
Through it all, Hamilton has been famed for his leading man good looks and perpetual tan — something that many people (himself included) have mocked time and time again. Now at age 72, Hamilton is co-starring alongside Christopher Sieber (“Spamalot,” “It's All Relative”) in the national tour of the Tony Award-winning revival of the Broadway musical comedy “La Cage Aux Folles,” which plays Chicago's Bank of America Theatre from Tuesday, Dec. 20, through Sunday, Jan. 1.
Hamilton is no stranger to the stage, what with recent stints as the slick lawyer Billy Flynn in the musical “Chicago” on Broadway in 2001 and 2007. But Hamilton was still getting used to the grind of touring during a telephone interview from Cleveland.
“I don't really think people get what touring is like. It's not for the faint of heart,” Hamilton said. “Even on your day off, you're traveling. So physically it's challenging.”
Then there are the performing demands of “La Cage Aux Folles,” which is based upon the hit 1978 French film of the same name. Composer Jerry Herman (“Mame,” “Hello, Dolly!”) and playwright Harvey Fierstein (“Torch Song Trilogy”) transformed the property into a hit Broadway musical in 1983, while director Mike Nichols remade and Americanized the property as the 1996 film comedy “The Birdcage.”
The plot concerns a gay nightclub owner named Georges and his star drag queen partner, Albin (aka Zaza), who are asked by their grown son, Jean-Michel, to conceal their relationship from his fiancee and her ultraconservative parents when they all pay a visit to their swanky home in San Tropez, France. So when Jean-Michel's estranged mother fails to show up, Albin decides to dress in drag to make their family appear more “traditional.”
Hamilton has the less-flamboyant role of Georges, but he loves playing up all the farcical aspects of Fierstein's script and singing Herman's catchy show tunes.
“It's breathtakingly beautiful stuff,” Hamilton said about Herman's score that includes such memorable tunes like “The Best of Times,” “Look Over There” and “I Am What I Am.” “And in another moment, there's a line in Harvey's script that comes right out of Borscht Belt comedy and you say to yourself (‘La Cage Aux Folles') is not what you think it is.”
Hamilton knows the danger of performing just to get laughs, so he tries to keep things genuine night to night.
“For me it's very seductive to try to be funny like when I did the movie musical ‘Zorro, the Gay Blade,'” Hamilton said. “It was a hard line I had to walk in that because I knew I could play the cheap joke or I could try to play the underlying pathos of it.”
Hamilton acknowledges that some audiences may be uncomfortable with the gay characters depicted onstage in “La Cage Aux Folles.” But he feels a generational shift is occurring in the U.S. and that more people are becoming accepting of gay couples.
What's interesting is the producers for “La Cage Aux Folles” symbolically opened the tour this past October in Des Moines, the capital of one of the few states where same-sex marriage is legal in America. And in another bit of news, Sieber recently married his longtime partner, Kevin Burrows, after same-sex marriage became legal in New York earlier this year.
“Middle America is starting to look at this as being a family show,” Hamilton said about “La Cage Aux Folles.” “What I found really unique about it is that it's a love story, it's about being correct to yourself and to your family and to be who you are.”
“La Cage aux Folles”
“La Cage aux Folles”
Location: Bank of America Theatre, 18 W. Monroe St., Chicago. (800) 775-2000 or <a href="http://broadwayinchicago.com">broadwayinchicago.com</a>
Showtimes: Tuesday, Dec. 20, through Sunday, Jan. 1. 7:30 p.m. Dec. 20, 22, 26-27, 29-30; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Dec. 21, 23, 28; 2 and 8 p.m. Dec. 31; 2 p.m. Dec. 24 and Jan. 1
Tickets: $32-$95