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They say the third time's the charm, and for Menier Chocolate Factory artistic director David Babani, the old saying rings true. After garnering Tony Award nominations for transferring productions of Sunday in the Park With George and A Little Night Music to Broadway, he finally cinched the deal with the revival of La Cage aux Folles, which earned the 2010 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical.

There was talk in the press that there were some hard feelings on Tony night when you were cut off during the Best Revival of a Musical acceptance speech. Your fellow producers, Sonia Friedman and Barry Weissler, both had the opportunity to speak.
David Babani: It couldn't have been further from the truth. Absolutely I was frustrated at not being able to say my thanks and get my moment to do that. But, it was nothing to do with Barry and nothing to do with Sonia. We were very organized in what we were going to do well within our time limit, but obviously, not according to the Tonys. I'm sure I'm not the first person to have been cut off at the Tonys and I'm pretty sure I won't be the last. I've never had a more collaborative and thrilling experience than working with Sonia and Barry as a trio of leading producers on this production. I love my partners so much. There's no question that this production of La Cage is successful because of all three of us being so diverse and so passionately involved on all the minutiae of this production. I think each of us brings out the best in each other. It's such a fruitful partnership and I really can't wait to see what we can come up with together on any other future productions.

What had you planned to say?
DB: The two big things that I wanted to say [were] just a tremendous thank you to Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein, who, without them and this fantastic show, we wouldn't have been able to create this production, and I wanted to say a big thank-you to them for their support and for trusting us to go slightly left of field with it when we were originally starting out.

The other thing I wanted to say was, when we were starting out this production three years ago at the Chocolate Factory, I was standing in our bar after a matinee. It must have been literally some point after the end of the first week of previews and a family came out after the show, a mum and a dad, and they had two kids. I think, an 11-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy. And they pulled them aside with some urgency and I was standing right next to them. And they said to them, "Kids, if you grow up to be half as happy as that family on stage, then we've done our job." And it just put the whole thing into the most incredible perspective for me, and I thought, "It's just so fantastic that that is now the message that La Cage has in 2010, or 2007 back then, and it shows how much the world has changed in the last 25 years since it was originally first performed. It's almost ceased being this political show and having this political message to having this one about morals and family values. I love that that's what people take away from it, and I think if our production stands to anything, it's that sort of message. It just made me so happy and proud to be involved with something like that.

La Cage composer-lyricist Jerry Herman and book writer Harvey Fierstein had not seen the Menier production until it arrived on Broadway, is that correct?
DB: Correct. Neither of them got to see the original production in London, but they were both quite involved. I met with Harvey and Jerry to talk about our approach. This was before any director, before anybody was attached, to explain about the Chocolate Factory and the reason why I wanted to do the show. After seeing the last revival, I was so empowered by the show, and I thought, there's this wonderful story there, and it seems to keep getting buried under all the glitz and the glamour of how La Cage has been presented previously, both in the original Arthur Laurents production and in the Jerry Zaks revival. And they immediately latched onto that and said, "That's right, we wrote a play and quite a dark play with music." That's what we attempted to sort of present in our production, and it's the polar opposite [of previous productions]. Again, it's a testament to the piece that it can take such differing styles of production and still be immensely fun and powerful and entertaining and moving and funny. I think that's just the mark of a great piece of work.

The Menier clearly has an affection for American musicals. All of your musical programming, whether premieres or revivals, has been authored by American writers.
DB: The reason why I guess there's such a leaning toward American things is that American musical theatre as an art form is truly extraordinary and incredibly varied and there's just so much more of it proportionally to anything else. And indeed we’re doing our first British production right now — we're doing Aspects of Love — and very much approaching the show in the same way. It's a thrilling experience so far, and I hope the experience translates into what the audience are gonna see on the stage. With any show we do, whether it be a play or a musical, it's more about: How can we best tell the story in our space? And as you say, just that exercise of going through that exploration with creative teams and sometimes the original author, sometimes not, means that ultimately you distill down what was hopefully intended and manage to present it in a way that audiences can really engage with it. And if you're lucky enough to have one of our shows leave the building, we work incredibly hard to not just pick up a production and plunk it down somewhere, we look at where it's going to, we look at who the audience is and how we can still retain that essence of storytelling without either being dwarfed in where we're going or without losing the relevancy, hopefully, of what the production has achieved. Continued...