ajhlovestheatre

CATS: THE JELLICLE BALL

Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber

based on ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’ by T S Eliot

additional lyrics by Trevor Nunn and Richard Stilgoe

directed by Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch

Broadhurst Theatre, New York City – open-ended run

running time: 2 hours 45 minutes including interval 

https://catsthejellicleball.com

The word ‘revival’ scarcely does justice to the transformation effected by directors Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch, and choreographers Omari Wiles and Arturo Lyons on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s legendary extravaganza based on the T S Eliot feline poetry. Cats was a sensation back in the 1980s, the late Dame Gillian Lynne as choreographer proving, finally, that us Brits could actually create a full-on dance musical, rather than just looking wistfully across the pond at the work of people like Bob Fosse and Michael Bennett. This new iteration, set in the world of urban queer ballroom, caused almost as much of a stir when it premiered nearly two years ago downtown at World Trade Center’s PAC NYC. Now it arrives on Broadway like a bolt of rainbow-coloured lightning or a breath of fragrant air (with perhaps a musky hint of good, honest sweat).

Not even Cats’ greatest admirers (guilty as charged) could make much of a case for its coherence as drama though, preferring to be swept along by the outlandish spectacle and sheer exhilaration, little of which was captured in the 1998 filmed version, and best to entirely draw a veil over the disastrous 2019 movie. Cats: The Jellicle Ball makes no attempt to address the barely-there book but transplants the Jellicle cats of Eliot’s imagination from John Napier’s iconic moonlit rubbish dump of the original to a makeshift venue where a multiethnic, multi-gendered crew gather to walk their ball, voguing and death-dropping as though their lives depend upon it. 

Just as the New London (now the Gillian Lynne) in London and the Winter Garden on Broadway were elaborately transformed to create what was one of the first immersive musicals (although the Hair team’s Dude and Harold Prince’s reinvention of Candide both predated it on Broadway), so set designer Rachel Hauck has turned the Broadhurst into a space where this new kind of Jellicle Ball can happen. There’s a runway where the orchestra and most of the front rows would be, a DJ podium, cabaret-style tables and chairs in the boxes, audiences in onstage bleachers, a plethora of glittering black beaded curtains, a disco ball the size of a small planet, and, as with the original, these Jellicles spend as much time prowling the aisles as they do on stage. It has a deliberate, hardscrabble grit to it, the kind of place that would probably look pretty stark when viewed under less forgiving light than the gorgeous, colourful creations of Adam Honoré. 

That sense of creating something fabulous with limited resources but unfettered imagination carries through to Qween Jean’s Tony-nominated costumes, which are a riot of colour, invention and sexiness. There are a couple of nods to cats ears in the headwear but that isn’t really the aesthetic being aimed at here. Nikiya Mathis’ wigs and Rania Zohny’s make-up designs are exactly what they need to be: extravagant and eye-popping. 

Given what a radical reinterpretation The Jellicle Ball gives us of the physical world of Cats, you might be surprised how little messing about has been done with the music (orchestrations by David Wilson and Lloyd Webber himself). The overture, with its wailing synths, fugues and roundelays, is still there in all its thunderous, playful, slightly weird glory, Brittany Bland’s projection design even including a delightful homage to the ‘cats eyes’ logo that internationally characterised the original. Elsewhere, certain numbers have been given stronger, more insistent beats but it’s still very much the Cats we all knew and loved, or at least put up with, and most of the singing is terrific.

Wiles and Lyons’ choreography is exhilarating and feels like something truly fresh on the Broadway stage. It also becomes a tad repetitive: there’s only so many times over a nearly three hour long show that you can watch dancers dipping on cue and not wonder about them injuring themselves and what the physio bill for this production must be like. During the climactic Jellicle Ball itself, here a series of competitions in different vogue ballroom styles, I found myself missing the elegance of Lynne’s original ballet and jazz-inspired creations, for all the athleticism and sassy charm on display. Judging from all the screaming (actively encouraged by the way, this ain’t Lincoln Center) and fan-snapping all around me, I was in the minority.

That’s not to say though that Cats: The Jellicle Ball isn’t a rollicking good time….it absolutely is. You just need to be prepared to overlook that these wired, sensational New Yorkers are spouting the London place names (“in Launceston Place and in Kensington Square”, “the grimy road of Tottenham Court”, “up up up past the Russell Hotel”) of Eliot’s poems, for no very intelligible reason (if you can make out the words at all, that is), and that there are sections where there’s as much noise coming from the audience as there is from the stage or the loudspeakers.

Another casualty of this bracing new approach is any sort of pathos. Because Ken Ard’s glorious DJ Griddlebone has whipped the audience into such a ‘yasss kween’ level of frenzy, moments like the entrance and subsequent dismissal of Grizabella (‘Tempress’ Chasity Moore), the glamour cat, or rather former House Mother in this iteration, who has fallen on hard times) goes for very little, where it should break your heart. Real feeling does creep in though, welcomely, at the top of the second act where the contemplative ‘The Moments Of Happiness’ sequence has been turned into a beautiful celebration, complete with slide show, of the queer and trans people who lit the way for others to follow. 

The sense of community amongst the large ensemble is palpable but certain performers inevitably stand out. Chief among them are Broadway veteran and all-round treasure André de Shields as a witty, warmly imposing Old Deuteronomy, the leader of the Jellicles, and ballroom legend Junior Labeija as an elaborately attired and infinitely touching Gus the theatre cat. Nora Schell’s roof-raising, booty-shaking, body-positive Bustopher Jones is a knockout, as is Sydney James Harcourt’s smooth, sexy-as-hell Rum Tum Tugger. Dudney Joseph Jr is a smashing MC as Munkustrap and I also loved the sweetness of Teddy Wilson Jr and Bryson Battle as two of the gentler members of the tribe, and the lithe grace of Robert ‘Silk’ Mason as a drastically reinvented Mr Mistoffolees. By contrast, Leiomy is a barnstorming delight as a not-that-mysterious Macavity, and Bebe Nicole Simpson is flat-out hilarious and vocally impressive as one of her sidekicks.

Victoria the white cat here becomes literally the sole white girl at the ball, and Baby Byrne is utterly entrancing. Emma Sofia, like a human fireball, almost stops the show as a Latina Skimbleshanks, now a NY Metro worker. Moore’s Grizabella is one of the most beloved performances of this Broadway season, but she doesn’t fully work for me. In this new concept there never feels as though that much is at stake for her, and the catharsis that should come from the renowned ‘Memory’ just isn’t there. It doesn’t help that her singing is below par, or at least it was the night I saw the show. She gets a standing ovation and a spectacular exit, different from, but related to, that of Grizabella in the previous Cats, but it feels more because it’s the ‘Big Number’ and that here we finally have a Black trans leading lady on the Great White Way, which is indeed an awesome accomplishment. 

Quibbles aside, this is a cracking piece of musical theatre, an explosion of queer joy and riotous colour. They’ve taken an established favourite, and a favourite of the establishment, and given it an anarchic edge and energy. It’s not like anything else playing in New York or London, and injects mainstream theatre with a jolt of electricity and outrageousness.