There are musicals, and then there’s Cats. Andew Lloyd Webber’s show is often the one held up as a bewildering example by non-believers. People dress as cats in leg-warmers and sing children’s poems, and it’s a hit? The bafflingbody horrorof the 2019 film didn’t do much for the show’s image, either. It was the 80s, loyalists say, it was a different time!
But Cats is back, and theatre producers would prefer we just buy a ticket and live in the past. Cats is perhaps best now as a fond memory, where you can forgive its wilted structure, stop-start pacing and tired stereotyping (don’t even try to count how often a female cat is there to sigh and swoon over a male one). There, you can enjoy how the score is drenched in 80s synth and peppered with pastiche, with hints of jazz, music hall, rock and a little opera (one of Lloyd Webber’s great loves); it iscatchy as all get-out.Memory, the plaintive cri de coeur by fading glamour cat Grizabella, was a genuine chart hit, lingering in jewellery boxes and hold music. And Gillian Lynne’s original choreography, oddly sexy and determinedly feline, lives on in plenty of giggly shared stories between friends of sexual awakenings and Rum Tum Tugger.
To bring it back, unchanged – as is happening now inSydney– feels like a return to the worst of the megamusicals craze: cashing in on a known quantity even after its cultural cachet has faded. The production now playing at Sydney’s Theatre Royal is a 40th anniversary celebration of the first time the musical made it to Australia (featuring Debra Byrne, Marina Prior, and John Wood) and it’s like time has stopped. There are no surprises. It’s even back in the same theatre.
There are a few joyful moments – the best of them featuring Axel Alvarez, who plays “the magical” Mr Mistoffelees, the cat with a light-up coat who delivers his magic through ballet, including a dazzling number of fouettés. His astonishing ease and classical technique is the very best of what Cats can be. Mark Vincent is perhaps at his stage best as the beloved Jellicle leader Old Deuteronomy, Tom Davis is a joyful, all-in Skimbleshanks (that’s the railway cat), Todd McKenney pleasingly hams it up Gus the Theatre Cat, and Gabriyel Thomas, tears in her eyes as she sang Memory, earned ringing cheers as Grizabella.
The cast and creative team are producing beautiful work – those full-ensemble dance formations brought forth applause every time the cast found themselves moving together as one – but what a shame it’s all in service to the same old Cats, which can’t hide its flaws with novelty any more.
Even worse is that you’d never know it in Australia, but internationally, Lloyd Webber – who the Pulitzer-winningcritic Andrea Long Chu describedas the force that “set Broadway on its current path of chintzy commercial nihilism” – is facing a generational shift. Cats lasted in the West End for 21 years and Phantom on Broadway for 35 – and the artists who grew up with these silly, thrilling works are mining them for new meaning and contemporary beats, testing how much they can speak to this moment.
In the UK, Lloyd Webber’s Starlight Express (about trains – it is Cats on roller-skates) has returned in a completely new production – with the train Greaseball now played by a woman withqueer undertones. An upcoming production of Phantom of the Opera is running a guerrilla marketing campaign that has theatre influencersbreathlessly reportingon every incident. Jamie Lloyd brought a blood-soaked Nicole Scherzinger to a cool Sunset Boulevard,netting three Tonysin the process; he’s now reimagining Evita with Rachel Zegler, who sings Don’t Cry for Me Argentina on a balconyto crowds outside the theatre.
And, heartbreakingly for those of us a world away, Cats has been revolutionised in New York, refashioned in the undergroundballroom scenebuilt by queer and trans people, where speaking those secret Jellicle names and claiming identities has anew, deeper resonance.
It’s hard not to feel left out. In Australia, nostalgia rules, and we’ve had a parade of paint-by-number Lloyd Webbers keeping our best employed but our creative cups empty. In the past year or two, we’ve had afaithful but tough-to-watchSunset Boulevard starring a miscast Sarah Brightman; a straightforwardJesus Christ Superstar, andan outright offensiveJoseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
When it comes to plays, Australia is leagues ahead with new productions that interrogate, elevate, and subvert old works; with musicals, especially on main stages, we tend to defer to the tried-and-true. There are pockets brimming with ideas – the Hayes Theatre in Sydney has been home to some of the best – but we have to let old shows run their course if we want to give space to new artists and new perspectives – and bring in new audiences. Can’t we give Cats a new life too?
Cats is on atTheatre Royal, Sydneyuntil 6 September;then touring to Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne and Brisbane