Theater assessment by Adam Feldman
A revival of Cats, not less than in principle, would possibly nicely offer you paws. After a then-record 18-year run on Broadway—with a tagline, “NOW AND FOREVER,” that started to sound a bit like a risk—Andrew Lloyd Webber’s synthtastic Nineteen Eighties musical lastly hung up its leotards and yak-hair wigs in 2000. Its comeback efforts since then have been lower than thrilling: a taxidermic 2016 revival, a broadly mocked 2019 movie. It appeared virtually as if the present had been condemned to obsolescence, humbled and disavowed like its personal once-grand Grizabella the Glamour Cat. However now alongside comes an exciting reconception on the Perelman Performing Arts Middle that not solely rescues Cats from the oversize junkyard however lifts it, like Grizabella herself, to sudden heights.
Cats: The Jellicle Ball | {Photograph}: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
Is Cats good or unhealthy? That’s a query with out a solution. Cats is past good and unhealthy. Cats is Cats. Cats is about cats competing to be despatched into the ionosphere. Cats is about cats who sing mild verse from T.S. Eliot’s Outdated Possum’s E-book of Sensible Cats, an train in excessive silliness that sits on the stylish finish of an anthropomorphic-cat comedy style that features, at decrease stations, New Yorker cartoons and I Can Has Cheezburger? memes. Cats is about Andrew Lloyd Webber writing much more melodies than he typically does—to suit the necessities of Eliot’s meter—and producing many bangers proper out of his hat. Cats is about human dancers performing feline, weirdly horny strikes. At its finest, it’s ridiculous and it’s form of magical. At its worst, it’s simply ridiculous.
The co-directors of Cats: The Jellicle Ball, Zhailon Levingston and PAC’s Invoice Rauch, embrace the musical’s inherent strangeness by absorbing it into queerness. What might have been kitsch is now celebratory camp: The present’s secret ball for cats is now a ballroom runway competitors of the sort just lately visited by TV’s Pose and Legendary, presided over by éminence lavande Outdated Deuteronomy (a regal André De Shields, maned and decked out in purple splendor) and emceed by Munkustrap (Dudney Joseph Jr.). This idea—let’s name it Paris Is Purring—is good for the musical’s primarily revue-like construction, and its open embrace of artifice permits the manufacturing to sidestep the lure of attempting to seem like, or transfer in ways in which recommend, precise cats. As a substitute of feline imitation, it’s serving pussy realness, honey—all the time with an underlying understanding, as on the balls themselves, that realness is itself a form of efficiency.
Cats: The Jellicle Ball | {Photograph}: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
The cats who determine most prominently are contestants for the evening’s greatest trophy. They embody the ripped and strutting Rum Tum Tugger (a prepossessing Sydney James Harcourt); the Magical Mr. Mistoffelees (the elegant Robert “Silk” Mason, in hair worthy of Stable Gold’s Darcel Wynne); the nostalgic outdated theater cat Gus (ballroom legend Junior LaBeija) and his doting caretaker, Jellylorum (Shereen Pimentel, in beautiful voice); the attitudinal Latina MTA employee Skimbleshanks (a really humorous Emma Sofia); the kittenish stripper-blonde Victoria (Child); the troublemakers Mungojerrie (Jonathan Burke) and Rumpleteazer (Dava Huesca); and, after all, Grizabella (“Tempress” Chasity Moore), who begins the present as a downtrodden cleansing girl however will get to sing the unforgettable “Reminiscence”—and sing it mighty nicely. A number of the Jellicles have new twists: Jennyanydots (Xavier Reyes) is now the drag mom of the Home of Dots; the depraved Macavity (the magnetic Antwayn Hopper) is now the mastermind of mopping, feared for stealing different queens’ costumes and props however now not the demonic risk of the unique. (That operate has been doled out to others within the manufacturing’s most pointed departure from the unique.)
Cats: The Jellicle Ball | {Photograph}: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
Cats: The Jellicle Ball delivers all the things you need from Cats in a totally recent approach. The small orchestra, carried out by music director William Waldrop, sounds an excellent deal fuller than one would possibly count on. Often ornamented with fashionable beats, Lloyd Webber’s melodies come by means of clearly and alarmingly contagiously; the present’s opening quantity, “Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats,” will stick in your head whether or not you need it to or not. (Trace: You gained’t!) Arturo Lyons and Omari Wiles’s vogue-heavy choreography is a constant delight, and the wonderful ensemble forged—whose performers fall on large spectrums of gender id and presentation—radiates pleasure. Rachel Hauck’s principally peninsular set, lit by Adam Honoré, consists of amusing immersive parts for these seated on the cabaret tables and banquettes close to the central runway. Qween Jean’s costumes and Nikiya Mathis’s wigs are as extravagantly inventive because the idea calls for; Kai Harada’s sound is the cat’s meow.
Cats: The Jellicle Ball | {Photograph}: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
What’s most spectacular about this manufacturing, nonetheless, is how nicely the idea enhances the musical. Levingston and Rauch’s imaginative and prescient suits Cats like an extended sequined glove. No probability is missed to tease out potential queer meanings—when the cats sing “Jellicle cats come out tonight,” a few of them carry indicators that say “COME OUT”—and at instances, the matches are virtually eerily excellent: within the present’s sense of a hidden group, for instance, or in its emphasis on respecting the names the cats have chosen for themselves. In some ways, this model of Cats is arguably superior to the usual one. The ballroom-competition set-up makes the present’s wispy storytelling clearer than it has ever been, as are particular person strands of the story—such because the function of Munkustrap within the proceedings, or the arc of Grizabella’s greatest fan, Sillabub (the sweet-voiced Teddy Wilson Jr., in a sunflower crown). And the viewers responds ecstatically: On the evening I attended, the present obtained two midshow standing ovations. It will be a disgrace if the runway ended with this manufacturing’s restricted run at PAC. Broadway’s Circle within the Sq. Theatre can be free after Romeo + Juliet wraps up subsequent January. Who is aware of? It may be simply the place for an prolonged catwalk.
Cats: The Jellicle Ball. Perelman Performing Arts Middle (Off Broadway). Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. E-book by T.S. Eliot. Directed by Zhailon Levingston and Invoice Rauch. With André De Shields, “Tempress” Chasity Moore, Junior LaBeija, Sydney James Harcourt, Antwayn Hopper, Dudney Joseph Jr., Robert “Silk” Mason, Shereen Pimentel, Emma Sofia, Child, Xavier Reyes, Teddy Wilson Jr. Operating time: 2hrs 35mins. One intermission.
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Cats: The Jellicle Ball | {Photograph}: Courtesy Matthew Murphy