ajhlovestheatre

CATS

Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber 

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

directed and choreographed by Drew McOnie

Regents Park Open Air Theatre, London – until 19 September 2026, then touring

running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including interval 

https://openairtheatre.com/production/cats

Although it has been superseded by Phantom in terms of longevity and universal popularity, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s eclectic 1981 score for Cats -by turns bouncy, menacing then melancholic and often far more musically interesting than it’s given credit for- comes up fresh and frequently thrilling in the open air. It’s probably the single most successful aspect of this Regents Park version, which fields a cat-ophony (I’m sorry) of fine voices and a superb twelve-strong band playing Lloyd Webber and David Cullen’s 1980s-tinged orchestrations, under Adam Fisher’s crystal clear sound design. If aurally this new Cats is wonderful, visually and conceptually it is something of a mixed bag.

There are several things working against Drew McOnie’s well meant, athletic but only fitfully effective revival. The biggest is probably the shadow of Dame Gillian Lynne’s unsurpassable dance and movement for the original production, recreated globally and in numerous revivals plus the 1998 video version. Lynne was so much more than just a choreographer-for-hire in Trevor Nunn’s initial vision, instrumental in the very fabric of the bonkers but magical Cats that authentically took the West End and Broadway, as well as almost everywhere else that musicals are staged, by storm in the 1980s. Lynne it was that synthesised ballet and jazz dance with feline movement in a way that encompassed story telling, raw emotion and sheer showbiz brio, and her work was as, if not more, essential to what made Cats such a phenomenon as Lloyd Webber’s music, John Napier’s extravagant rubbish dump set or the ear-tickling ‘Old Possum’ poetry by T S Eliot that form the basis of the text. Her contribution cannot be over-estimated: take that away and it’s interesting to see how much “there” is there.

The newly shuttered The Jellicle Ball on Broadway demonstrates successfully (artistically if not financially) that there is more than one way to skin a cat (sorry, I just had to) but only by totally reinventing what the show is. McOnie isn’t positing his Cats as a radical new concept: it’s essentially the same idea as the original but with less dramatic potency and some disappointingly underwhelming visuals. There is a symmetry and intermittent passion to his choreography (executed with exemplary commitment and precision, by the way) but it’s seldom as galvanising or memorable as what Lynne gave us. It also, crucially, only sometimes looks like feline movement. For some of the show, the talented cast appear to be engaging in high level group exercise activities: undeniably attractive to watch but not really suggestive of this most graceful, volatile and sometimes feral of domestic animals.

There is a popular school of thought that Cats is essentially plotless, but, while it’s hardly Ragtime or Les Mis, themes of rebirth and redemption run through it, in the Jellicle’s quest for one of their number to be chosen to ascend to cat heaven, or the Heaviside Layer, as Eliot characterised it. Along the way, their leader Old Deuteronomy is abducted by terrorist Macavity, only to be returned with the help of “the original conjuring cat”, Magical Mr Mistoffolees. All of this is put over in such a perfunctory fashion here though that if you blink you’ll miss it, the repeated prioritisation of speed and athleticism over storytelling blunting any emotional impact. 

There’s little world-building in Sami Fendall’s stark, borderline ugly designs for set, costumes and wigs. The giant shattered crescent moon setting is a sort of industrial rust colour, while the pallet for the scrappy costumes incorporates that hue while also extending to blacks, greys and whites. It’s just not very interesting to look at, or at least it isn’t until Jessica Hung Yan Yun’s impressive, mood-shifting lighting kicks in. These weird human-feline hybrids, some sporting headdresses that look like swimming caps with ears tacked on to them and most made up to look less like cats than RuPaul’s Drag Race contestants forced to go onstage before completing their ‘lewks’, appear to be designed primarily to withstand all weathers. That’s understandable perhaps but one can can’t help hoping they all get a major overhaul before this production heads off around the country to tour indoor venues.

There are some beautiful dancers in this cast, and one of the most successful aspects of McOnie’s work is how he makes this bunch of Jellicles feel like an authentic community, or tribe. There’s something primal and tender in the way they all bed down together, or the way they move as one when dealing with a perceived threat. In a terrific ensemble, where everyone is singing and dancing at full throttle throughout, individual performances manage to pop, despite what the cast are given to wear.

Gary Wilmot is genuinely heartbreaking as Gus The Theatre Cat, dreaming of his former glory days upon the stage (and interestingly, he gets to wear the distinctive multi-coloured patchwork costume as originally designed by John Napier, which has the unfortunate effect of showing up the creations around him for the half-baked monstrosities they are). Lucie-Mae Sumner is just lovely as Jellylorum, his sidekick-cum-carer. Millie O’Connell and Katie Dunsden are sexy, sassy and fabulous delivering the jazzy, irresistible ‘Macavity’ number. Briana Craig and Danny Nattrass bring the house down as a pair of witty, stunningly acrobatic petty criminals (“Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer….we are highly efficient cat burglars as well”) despite being saddled with strange costumes that make them look like frogs rather than felines.

On press night, recent drama school graduate Taziva-Faye Katsande subbed for an ailing Rachael Wooding as ‘Memory’-haunted Grizabella, the downtrodden, faded Glamour Cat. She’s clearly very talented, as evidenced by a glance at the programme and noting how many roles she’s covering, with a warm, rangy voice of considerable power. At just nineteen years old though, she simply doesn’t yet have the requisite emotional range or gravitas to do justice to this tragic role, but it’s a creditable turn. Somewhat bizarrely, Melanie La Barrie, wonderful as a gender-swapped Old Deuteronomy, the venerable leader of the Jellicles, is wigged and costumed like a ‘traditional’ Grizabella from the Nunn-Lynne-Napier original (Fendall’s design for the character here is like a Disney princess down on her luck), and would actually probably knock the show’s most famous number right out of the (Regents) Park.

Cats is much more than just a one-song show though, and it is an undoubted pleasure to hear this score ‘live ‘ again. It’s a shame that this strange production only occasionally comes within a whiskers distance of the magic of the original, and one wonders what people here encountering the show for the first time will think it’s actually about. For all my misgivings though, Drew McOnie’s Cats is still ten times better than Tom Hooper’s misconceived film version: now that is a Memory best forgotten.