If there’s any bygone hit musical that’s ripe for reinvention, it’s Andrew Lloyd Webber’s bombastic furball Cats – a 1981 musical megahit 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.) Cats: The Jellicle Ball, which premiered two years ago at the Perelman Performing Arts Center downtown, applies an entirely new framework to this dated landmark: 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 breathes fresh energy and a human-scaled depth to the material. The conceit fits more easily into Lloyd Webber’s litter box of musical trifles 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 all to themselves. Is there any more apt explanation of how queer people, especially those engaged in drag performance, see themselves? These cats are deliberate 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, for starters, why all these disparate cats have gathered together in one place to perform for us. The opening song’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), that juts out into the Broadhurst Theatre’s auditorium and includes onstage risers for some audience members to get a closer look at the action.
The ball gives a nominal through-line to Lloyd Webber’s eclectic score, which remains recognizable despite the addition of some rapped lyrics and synthed-up house beats from the unseen 11-person band under music director/conductor William Waldrop’s baton. 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 (Nora Schell) shows off her curvy charms in the “body” competition.
The duet for Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer (Jonathan Burke and Dava Huesca) now falls into the “tag team purrformance” section – though the two manage to be upstaged by the lithe and acrobatic duo of Baby Byrne and the ballet-trained Primo Thee Ballerino. Other standouts include high-kicking Emma Sofia as the railway cat Skimbleshanks and Robert “Silk” Mason, a tall and slinky performer whose Mister Mistoffelees stretches across the stage like 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. DeShields camps it up as an éminence grise who can still bust a move or two on the dance floor. (His spotlight number feels a tad padded, but it’s hard to begrudge a Broadway legend who will doubtless earn another Tony nomination for his spirited work here.)
He’s not the only legend on stage. Director Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch have smartly cast some familiar faces from the world of ballroom. Junior LaBeija, the wise-cracking, shade-tossing scene stealer from Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is Burning, still owns his opulence as Gus, the theater cat.
And “Tempress” Chasity Moore, a ballroom icon who founded the House of Maison Margiela, brings a regal presence and a gravelly alto to Grizabella, the former glamour cat with a matted wig and threadbare coat who carries her belongings in a folding shopping cart. She doesn’t have the pipes or vocal power of previous Grizabellas, and wisely speak-sings much of her character’s Act 2 solo, “Memory.” But her rendition packs an emotional punch that transcends musicality.
Not only does Cats: The Jellicle Ball does celebrate the ballroom tradition, the show also nods to its origins. In the second act opener, “The Moments of Happiness,” De Shields’s Old Deuteronomy urges the cats to reflect on their past — “we had the experience but missed the meaning” — as a photo and video montage displays the decades-long struggle of Black queer folk to create space for themselves in hopes of achieving tolerance and eventual acceptance. (Projection designer Brittany Bland even opens the sequence with a shot of the Hamilton Lodge Ball, an annual dance in Harlem where as early as 1869 Black men paraded around in elaborate women’s gowns and wigs.)
How times have changed. The ballroom kitties now elicit whoops and the audible opening of fans from theatergoers who no longer have to be dragged to cross-dressing performances. Cats itself remains a lightweight bit of fluff and most of the large cast blends together into an indistinguishable clutter of furry limbs and puffed-out wigs. 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. These old cats might just have a tenth life in them after all. ★★★★☆
CATS: THE JELLICLE BALL
Broadhurst Theatre, Broadway
Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes (with one intermission)
Tickets on sale through Sept. 6 for $74 to $321