John Barrowman may have turned I Am What I Am, the big Act I curtain closer to La Cage aux Folles, into a personal signature song as well as the title of his recently-published second volume of his autobiography, but the show is sadly not what it was now that he’s in it.
Admittedly, he has a tough act to follow. After the reservoirs of pain, hurt and feeling that Douglas Hodge first mined and then Roger Allam recently excavated even more deeply in the role of a matriarchal drag queen Albin, whose relationship with his partner Georges is severely tested when the boy Jean-Michel that they have raised together plans to marry the daughter of a local political bigot, Barrowman merely skates over the glamorous surfaces of the role.
Partly it’s a problem of casting - it’s not just his apparent youthfulness, which makes the long relationship of more than 20 years at the core of the story altogether less believable (although it is technically possible), but also he’s cast entirely against type. He simply doesn’t have a shred of vulnerability or the fundamental lack of confidence that underpin his character’s defiant attack on the values that others try to impose on him.
Barrowman, on the other hand, is all handsome pecs (even bunched up to attempt to be tits as he dons a corset early on) and teeth, and even his constant yelps of surprise and alarm seem phoney and imposed, not from within the character’s own core of insecurity. It is only in the second act, when he is impersonating the son’s absent mother, that he finally tones it all down, and brings a more tentative - and therefore finally moving - air to his performance, although he sings it superbly throughout.
It’s an utterly professional turn, but it has the paradoxical effect of making the rest of the show look more frayed and insincere, too - others are forced to try too hard, in turn. It doesn’t help that Terry Johnson’s production has blurred some of the subtleties elsewhere - Tracie Bennett’s Jacqueline has now descended into a complete sub-panto turn, and the ghastly new maid of Syrus Lowe’s Jacob is full of the same broad comic brush strokes. There remains the logical inconsistency that has always attended these roles - why are they the sole French-accented pair when everyone in the show should be?
There are some compensating pleasures. Simon Burke brings admirable gravitas and dignity to nightclub owner Georges, and builds a touching relationship with his son, smartly played by Gabriel Vick. Iain Mitchell and Abigail McKern, as sympathetic cafe owners and later the awful Dindons, threaten to steal the show, proving as always that less is more. It’s something that the entire production, but especially Barrowman, could benefit from following.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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