A manhattan dad nearly choked on his Wheaties when his 14-year-old son ti midly asked:
“Dad, do I have to wear a dress to school?”
No joke. These conversations went on in kitchens and living rooms around the city, as a top school that educates learning-disabled and autistic children staged a student production of “La Cage aux Folles” — a cross-dressing, limp-wristed, gay comic romp whose main characters are a pair of “married” men.
As the show packs in adult audiences on Broadway with campy star Kelsey Grammer and a cast of drag queens (right), the kiddie version of “La Cage” was cooked up by the executive director of Child School, a private institution on Roosevelt Island that takes on youngsters from kindergarten through middle school.
Some 50 children as young as 10 were cast to play screaming queens, a school assistant told me.
The father, whose boy is autistic, was horrified that his vulnerable child might be made into a spectacle.
“I’m outraged!” said the dad, who did not want to be identified for fear his kid would be hurt. “They’re advocating for the gay lifestyle, giving them ideas. Saying, ‘It’s OK. If you’re having these feelings, experiment with it.’ ”
Then came the defense, necessary in this climate.
“Look, I’m not a homophobe,” the father said. But as a Catholic, “I’m teaching him that straight couples screwing around is a sin. If they want to teach tolerance, do ‘West Side Story.’ ”
Better yet, “teach them reading and writing.”
Several parents pulled kids from the play, which ran last night and has an encore performance tonight.
In addition, a few kids felt “uncomfortable,” a mom told me, and returned to classrooms instead of watching a dress rehearsal with the entire school.
Like other schools in this city that specialize in disabilities, Child School and sister Legacy HS are private. Tuition runs a whopping $30,000 a year. But many parents, no matter how high their incomes, get costs paid by the state, arguing that public schools can’t reach special-needs kids.
Maari de Souza, founder and executive director of Child School /Legacy, told me she had good reason to stage the gay-themed play.
“It’s a common problem with our youngsters,” she said. “Children tease each other about being gay.”
Kids of 10? De Souza grew hostile when I asked about parent complaints.
“I don’t wish to talk to you about this,” she said. “I thought you were just a reporter concerned about kids doing a play.” Well, that’s true.
A mom told me that cross-dressing is mandatory onstage. Last year’s “To Elvis With Love” featured boys dressing as girls and vice-versa so that, the director said, “the boys can feel what it’s like to dress like a girl.”
Previously, kids put on “The Rocky Horror Show,” whose star sings that he’s a “sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania.”
Some parents expressed concern about staging “La Cage,” a play that Broadway.com says is OK for children — “if you don’t mind taking your kids to a nightclub featuring bawdy drag queens and comfortable-in-their-skin gay men (who kiss!)”
“It struck me as a peculiar choice,” said Stephen Petrilli, whose 7-year-old son “doesn’t want to be in plays.” Including this one.
Another boy’s mom, Mary, decided, “It’s just acting, if you play a dog or a tree. Or wear a dress.”
It seems to me that this “teaching moment,” as the director described it, is best suited to young adults of college age, at a minimum. Vulnerable disabled kids, too young to understand — or too timid to protest — should not be expected to humiliate themselves, dancing and cross-dressing in an oversexed musical, just so adults can work out issues better left to grown-up professionals.
It’s called decency.
‘Shore’ way to tick off italians
Memo to Snooki: Enough!
The TV show “Jersey Shore” infuriates Italian-Americans with tacky portrayals of teased and tanned self-described “guidos.” So MTV executives were summoned to a kind of war council in New York last month with unamused folks who want to see the stereotypes sleep with the fishes.
Members of such groups as Order Sons of Italy in America sat down with MTV’s president of programming, Tony DiSanto, and others. They “expressed the angst demonstrated by tens of thousands of Italian-Americans concerning the negative stereotypical depiction of their Italian ethnicity in the program,” read a statement from the Italian groups.
Leaders say they’re “comfortable” MTV was “concerned enough by the complaints so as to meet with them and have an intelligent and communicative dialogue.” An MTV rep wouldn’t say if any promises were made.
I foresee big hair in the future.
Tribute to teen taken too soon
Four Father’s Days ago, lovely 16-year-old straight-A student Chanel Petro-Nixon vanished in daylight while looking for a job near her Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, home. She was found murdered four days later, her body stuffed in garbage bags.
The death of the church-going teen has confounded police, neighbors and Chanel’s parents. As the anniversary nears, cops seem no closer to finding the killer. But she is not forgotten.
A march and prayer vigil will start at 11 a.m. Saturday in front of Chanel’s home at 1605 Fulton St. I can think of no better way to honor the memory of a child taken too soon.
CNN on road to El
Struggling CNN is moving from its perch as a reliably lefty news source and positioning itself as a carnival sideshow. How else to explain Post reports that the network is close to signing the delusional, hooker-loving ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer as a chat host?
Eliot’s first guest? Bozo the Clown is free.
Al and pal eco-fraud
Uber-environmentalist Laurie David proudly cruises Los Angeles freeways in her Prius hybrid, flipping the bird at drivers of gas-guzzling Hummers. But she has been known to fly via Gulfstream jet between humongous, energy-drinking abodes in California and Martha’s Vineyard. She was unapologetic about crimes against green.
“Sure, I have a big house, but I use it to gather hundreds of people for eco-salons. . . . Sure, I could always cut down on clothes and dry-cleaning, but the point is not necessarily what more you could do — we all could do more — the point is that we do our part,” David told an environmental Web site.
Meanwhile, as Al Gore proselytized on the virtue of energy conservation, his Nashville estate drank electricity and natural gas at a rate 20 times the national average, according to Nashville Electric Service records. Called on this lapse, Gore said he retrofitted his ginormous house, one of several he owns with still-wife Tipper.
Gore and David adamantly deny a report that they had an affair that broke up the 40-year Gore marriage. Shame. They have lots in common.