If there’s any bygone hit musical that’s ripe for reinvention, it’s Andrew Lloyd Webber’s bombastic furball Cats – a show with mostly interchangeable characters crooning lite-rock-ish tunes with lyrics drawn from T.S. Eliot’s least remarkable poetry. (To call it mere doggerel would probably prompt cat-fanciers to release their claws.) The new immersive production at New York’s year-old Perelman Performing Arts Center, a black-box space housed in a jewel-box-like translucent marble shell overlooking the 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Center, draws on an entirely new framework that breathes fresh energy, and a human-scaled depth, to the material. The cats are now contestants in a vogueing battle of the sort made famous in the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning, the TV show Pose, or any number of drag competition shows.
Purrers are burning, all right, and the introduction of ballroom and ‘house’ culture fits more easily than you might imagine. In one of the first numbers, “The Naming of Cats,” MC Munustrap (Dudney Joseph Jr.) informs us that cats have three names – one for daily use, one for fancier occasions to “cherish his pride,” and a third secret “ineffable” name they keep to themselves. Is there any more apt explanation of how queer people, especially those engaged in drag performance, see themselves — as forgers of their own identities, with the ability to shift between chosen monikers, personas and even genders?
Reconceiving the show’s Jellicle Ball solves other problems too – including why all these disparate cats are gathered in one place. (The opening number’s call for the cats to “come out” for the ball takes on another LGBTQ-friendly layer of meaning as well.) Each number becomes part of a contest for individual cast members to strut and flex and grind to Arturo Lyons and Omari Wiles’s bouncy, ballroom-ready choreography. They perform on an elevated catwalk, strikingly designed by Rachel Hauck and lit by Adam Honoré, with the audience seated on three sides — and often craning to see where performers are vamping at any given moment.
The ball gives a throughline to Lloyd Webber’s eclectic score, which remains recognizable despite the addition of some rapped lyrics and synthed-up house beats from the unseen nine-person band. Sydney James Harcourt’s Rum Tum Tugger, a playa with a toned body and a heavenly falsetto, swaggers away with the “pretty boy” trophy, while Bustopher Jones (Garnet Williams filled in for Nora Schell at my performance) showed off her curvy charms in the “body” competition. The duet for Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer (Jonathan Burke and Dana Huesca) now falls into the “tag team purrformance” section – though the two manage to be upstaged by the lithe and acrobatic duo of Baby and the ballet-trained Primo. Other standouts include high-kicking Emma Sofia and Robert “Silk” Mason, whose Mistoffelees is a magically limber human bungee.
Qween Jean’s costumes and Nikiya Mathis’s hair and wig design serve memorable looks that would make RuPaul jealous – particularly the velvety royal-purple suit and ombré lion’s mane for André De Shields’s Old Deuteronomy. Director Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch also amp up the pathos for the former glamour cat Grizabella by casting ballroom legend and Maison Margiela founder “Tempress” Chasity Moore. She brings a regal presence to the role, as well as a gravelly alto that suggests the character’s overplayed ballad, “Memory,” might just have a tenth life in it after all. (It’s a pity that the lyrics frequently get lost in Kai Harada’s overamplified sound design – or perhaps the acoustics of PAC’s barnlike space bear more of the blame.)
The remix efforts only go so far. The sudden appearance of sirens and NYPD officers around cat burglar Macavity (Antwayne Hopper) is an unnecessary stab at political relevance that’s all-too-quickly resolved. And Cats itself remains a lightweight bit of fluff, with most of the large cast an indistinguishable clutter. But there’s no denying how much fun this production is – and how even a flawed show can find a path to rebirth via Eliot’s vaunted Heaviside Layer.
This is adapted from my review in the August/September issue of Musicals magazine.
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