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Forget everything you thought you knew about Cats. No, not the music! The music stays. But everything else has been improved upon in the off-Broadway capital-E Event of the summer, Cats: The Jellicle Ball, which is currently running at the shiny new Perelman Arts Center in the shadow of One World Trade.
Never was there ever a musical so badly in need of reinvention as Cats. The show was gangbusters on Broadway during its initial record-breaking run from 1982 to 2000, but it met the fate of so many hit musicals by becoming a deeply uncool punchline. Both because of the abstract magical-singing-cats premise and the repulsive CGI that defined its fiasco of a film adaptation, Cats was a withering relic of a bygone era. The Jellicle Ball, however, is a breath of fresh air, showcasing Andrew Lloyd Webber's fantastic songs without ever getting swallowed by the ridiculousness of the staging.
This new revision takes the cats out of Cats, in a literal sense, and without changing the lyrics it reimagines the jellicles as a house in the New York City ballroom scene. This Cats is explicitly queer, much more stylish, and actually rooted in something real. It becomes a story about a community that's holding a party with religious significance—one that the audience is actively invited to—and while the enthusiasm of the whole production would likely carry it to success even if the underlying work was merely fine, the dance setpieces coupled with Webber's classics are a nonstop sugar rush. Even for the staunchest of Cats haters, the fun should be irresistible.
Part of the absurdity of Cats is that, even midway through the second act, new cats keep popping in for a moment to sing a song about what kind of cat they are. But by seeding the show in the performance of ballroom, the rotation of solos makes much more sense. At no point does the show lag, but particular highlights are Emma Sofia as Skimbleshanks, a railway cat who provides the sexiest promotion for the MTA you've ever seen, and Robert "Silk" Mason as Mr. Mistoffelees, a gorgeous skyscraper of a cat who steals everyone's heart.
Grounding the show, and making it more than an exhilarating good time, is 78-year-old André De Shields as Old Deuteronomy, the venerable leader of the jellicles who presides over the party. De Shields's presence, along with explicit nods to ballroom history and the emotional thrust of "Memory," harken back to a much different time for queer people in New York City—before PrEP was de rigueur and before Paris Is Burning was a classic and before straight people made reservations for drag brunch. It addition to just being a blast, it also helped me acknowledge how much I take for granted, and the unpayable debt owed to those who came and went before me. The original Cats kind of fell out of a coconut tree—it's just a lark. But by rooting these songs in a specific perspective, it becomes more than a mere blockbuster. It's part of the community for which it is made.
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