Robert Tanitch reviews Cats at London Palladium
Premiered in 1981 Cats ran in London for a record-breaking 21 years and almost 9,000 performances. It has been translated into ten languages and has been seen by over 50 million people worldwide.
Cats is not a musical. It is dance theatre to songs by Andrew Lloyd Webber inspired by TS Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. The music is a mixture of parody and self‑parody. There is no story-line. The show is entirely dance-driven.
The show has been recreated by the original creators: director Trevor Nunn, choreographer Gillian Lynne, set designer John Napier and lighting designer David Hersey.
The setting is a huge rubbish dump which spills over the stalls and dress circle boxes. The second act is better than the first act.
The show’s punk alley cats have nothing to do with T S Eliot’s cats which belong to a pre-war generation and hark back to the Twenties, Edwardian and Victorian eras. The only cat, which looks as if he has stepped out of T S Eliot, is Bustopher Jones, a rich cat, in a fur coat and spats, who fancies himself.
There is far too much dancing. The words get lost. The energetic choreography, relentless and unvaried, is, as Lynne has acknowledged, a real killer, tiring for dancers and audiences alike.
Cats is essentially an ensemble piece in which everybody has his big moment. Ross Finnie is Skimbleshanks, fresh and bright, the railway cat, Nicholas Pound, wise and placid, is Old Deuteronomy and Joseph Poulton is magical Mr Mistofflees, the clever conjuring cat, Paul F Monaghan doubles as Bustopher Jones and Gus, the palsy, nostalgic theatre cat who acted with Henry Irving. Antoine Murray-Straughan is Rum Tum Trigger, now a curious rap cat.
Nicole Scherzinger gets star billing. Cast as Grizabella, a faded glamour puss, she saves her voice for the second time she sings “Memories” and in the curtain call she, outrageously, gestures to the audience to stand-up.
In America actors expect audiences to stand up to applaud and, if they don’t stand, actors presume they have not liked the show. But this is the first time I have seen an actor actually ask the audience to stand up.
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