7/05/24: Cats: The Jellicle Ball
What: The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical about cats, reimagined for the drag Ballroom culture.
And? Believe the hype. This is my favorite musical theater production I've seen so far in 2024. It's so life-affirming, defiant, and joyous. Everyone in that space is in the same world together (a rarer thing than it sounds), waving fans, screaming, clapping, stomping, and roaring to their feet repeatedly over the talent on that runway. The production pays beautiful homage to Ballroom culture and its history, including honoring its Founding Mothers, and casting real Ballroom performers in the show (including Junior LaBeija, member of The Iconic House of LaBeija and MC in the Paris is Burning doc, as Gus the Theatre Cat) alongside performers with more traditional stage experience (including the legend himself, André De Shields, as Old Deuteronomy). Much like my experience last week with A Little Night Music, I found myself investing anew in a show I thought I knew all the ins and outs of. But with this new lens of Ballroom, the dynamics around Old Deuteronomy, Gus, and Grizabella deepen in such a powerful way that I suddenly, at the bitter old age of *cough*, have an emotional connection to this strange show.
It's a bit like the Deaf West revival of Spring Awakening, whose lens added new depths that felt almost inevitable and required for the show to work: now, in a Ballroom setting, with each cat's song part of their runway competition, Cats finally works for me in thrilling, vivid clarity. I kinda wish it would run ... okay, not "now and forever," but certainly a bit longer.
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| The cast of Cats. Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman. |
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