I Am What I Am (La Cage aux Folles)

La Cage aux Folles opened at the Palace Theatre on Broadway on 21 August 1983, with a book by Harvey Fierstein after Jean Poiret's 1973 play, and took six Tony Awards including best musical. It concerns two men who have run a Saint-Tropez nightclub together for twenty years and are asked to dismantle their household for one evening to satisfy the family of their son's fiancée. Herman wrote in the older Broadway idiom of marches and waltzes rather than the sung-through style then arriving from London. The first-act curtain number, I Am What I Am, left the show quickly and entered general use.