How a Ballroom ‘Cats,’ a Gay Kiss and a Black Marine Reclaimed Old Musicals

Ten years ago, I cringed through an Encores! performance of one of the most odious musicals I’d ever seen. That’s not to throw shade on Encores!, the concert series that dredges up both diamonds and dirt from the musical theater dustbin. But “Irma La Douce,” a 1960 Broadway hit about jolly prostitutes and the men who keep them, was perhaps a dredge too far. Did I mention that it involved penguins?

In a way, it was a relief that the show was so bad: There was nothing to regret in consigning it to my personal catalog of cancellation.

Most of the most offensive musicals of the past are like that, providing their own incontrovertible arguments against revival, except as carefully labeled historical exhibits in some deep-future Encores! season.

On the other hand, the best vintage musicals need no excuses. They should be performed as long as enough people want to see them, and perhaps even longer, until the time is right again.

But between the disposables and the treasurables lies a range of works, middling to excellent, that can still be powerful despite certain problems. Often the problems arise from ways of looking at race and gender that, however progressive in their day, do not meet contemporary expectations. Who, if anyone, has the right perspective to address such works most authentically?

A good answer might start with artists who represent the group that’s objectionably depicted (or gratuitously ignored) in the show itself. And though I’m not a proponent of narrow identity matching, which can shrink a capacious story to a hall of mirrors with just one person inside, I’ve seen several examples recently in which the story is instead expanded. This happens when directors and performers from the communities in question thoughtfully reappropriate material that was once appropriated from them.