Judging from all the gray-haired men and women slowly getting out of their cars and walking arm-in-arm down the sidewalk, it looks like I am, unwittingly, going to a Sunday morning church service. Except it's a Thursday evening. And, as far as I can tell, this is Richmond's warehouse district, nary a church in sight. After I check the street address for the Richmond Triangle Players on my iPhone one more time before the battery dies, I fall in line with old people and headed for the door, which boasts, "If we didn't do it, who would?"

RTP has been doing "it" since 1993: producing almost 100 plays, each intended to introduce gay themes and culture to the former capital of the Confederate States of America. Tonight's offering is another sold-out performance of La Cage aux Folles, best summed up as a musical comedy about a gay nightclub owner, his drag queen husband, their straight son, his fiancée, and her decidedly homophobic parents.

In spite of its brick warehouse façade — three years ago, this building was a radiator shop — the theater the Richmond Triangle Players call home is all down-home glitz and spot-lit glamour inside: Polished counters, framed show posters, and black suede curtains play counterpoint to the building's cinder-block walls and fluorescent lights. A tattoo-sleeved bartender takes your order before opening curtain and will remember it — Jameson neat, please — when you come back during intermission. The little old woman I saw just moments ago on the street is sipping her cosmo while her husband flips through the program. A few rows ahead, a black lesbian couple shares a laugh with the usher. The audience is made up, mostly, of straight couples above the age of 40. Plaid shirts and khaki pants abound.