EGN NEWS DESK
Things appeared to alter when the video got here out.
At the tip of May, the Perelman Arts Center posted a clip on social media of “Jellicle Cats,” the catchy, effervescent opening quantity from the musical “Cats.” It confirmed a gaggle of queer performers catwalking in a rehearsal room earlier than breaking up to freely dance and vogue. One singer wore a cap winkingly topped with feline ears; one other stared down the digital camera and twirled her ponytail with declarative swagger.
This was the primary actual glimpse of a brand new, ballroom-inspired revival of “Cats,” operating by July 28 at PAC NYC, because the Perelman Center in Manhattan is thought. Since it was introduced practically a yr earlier, the present had been a topic of skepticism and mocking humor: “Cats” was ridiculous sufficient, however ballroom? Hardly a point out of the manufacturing glided by and not using a snicker.
Then the “Jellicle Cats” clip went viral, and jaws dropped. Celebrities chimed in, with the comic Ziwe saying, “Ok go off” and the filmmaker Justin Simien merely writing, “AYEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.” On TikTok, one individual commented, “do I……do I instantly need to see Cats?”
For over 4 many years, “Cats” has been one thing of a cultural punching bag. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s adaptation of poetry by T.S. Eliot, unfolding as a dance-heavy, revue-like present about cats gathering in a junkyard for his or her annual Jellicle Ball, has been seen as unusual at greatest, and kitsch at worst. Its earworms have pushed theater critics mad; its costumes of unitards and leg heaters are simply as not possible to dislodge out of your reminiscence. Tom Hooper’s movie adaptation, from late 2019, flopped disastrously, and was jokingly known as a darkish turning level that ushered within the pandemic.
But, in a second of stage administrators reconsidering, and infrequently reimagining, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musicals, reminiscent of a stark “Sunset Boulevard” transferring to Broadway from London this fall, maybe additionally it is the time for “Cats” to shake off its popular culture clichés and say one thing new.
That, at the very least, is the purpose of the PAC NYC manufacturing, known as “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” an immersive revival that is freed from felines and unfolds as a ballroom competitors. As an idea, it maps onto the musical with shocking ease and coronary heart.
“Think about ‘Cats’ being road characters in a junkyard and ballroom being these traditionally marginalized folks,” stated Zhailon Levingston, the present’s co-director. “In ballroom, you’ve got a centering of legacy and chosen household, the best way cats have a tribe. Both take what’s given to them, and switch it into one thing lovely.”
Levingston first noticed “Cats” as a toddler; he mainly pressured his mom to hire the 1998 video launch at Blockbuster. According to household lore, he watched your entire present inches from the tv display screen, with out getting up as soon as. That’s when it was clear, he stated, that “my mother knew that one thing was occurring, that this younger individual shouldn’t be the identical as the opposite children.”
Fast-forward to the pandemic, when Levingston was at residence along with his roommate, playfully questioning what “Cats” can be like if the characters have been “cats” within the older, slangy sense. Around that point, Bill Rauch, the creative director of PAC NYC, occurred to be attempting to work out a queer tackle the musical.
Rauch had already directed a queer twist on Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” and had imagined a model of “Cats” through which an older homosexual man would play Grizabella and sing the present’s defining ballad, “Memory,” alone in a homosexual bar. “As I frolicked with the fabric, although,” Rauch recalled, “I spotted that in fact it’s not a bar. It’s a ball.”
He started to assemble collaborators well-versed on the planet of ballroom. But he additionally, at some point, heard from Levingston, who needed to fulfill over Zoom and, in a daring stroke, requested to affix the manufacturing as a co-director. Rauch, shortly impressed, stated sure. (Among the 1000’s of feedback on the “Jellicle Cats” video was the performer Larry Owens tagging Levingston and saying, “Baby @zhailon isn’t enjoying.”)
As the manufacturing developed, lengthy gone was the preliminary picture of Grizabella the homosexual man. Instead, the Jellicle Ball was conceived as a succession of classes (stated like “CAT-egories”), with performers vying for ballroom glory relatively than deciding which cat will ascend to the Heaviside Layer. Along the best way, Levingston and Rauch discovered connections between their idea and the lyrics; the cats are described as “queens of the night time,” for instance, who “come out tonight” for the ball. So, they have been capable of keep the structure of the unique musical, including a couple of ballroom references however not chopping and changing materials.
“We need this manufacturing to be genuine to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Cats,’ to T.S. Eliot’s phrases and to ballroom,” Rauch stated. “All these issues are of equal weight and significance to us. If there’s a ballroom alternative that doesn’t honor the musical, or a musical alternative that doesn’t honor ballroom, then we don’t do it.”
In the spirit of the unique manufacturing, this “Cats” is immersive, combining PAC NYC’s modular theater areas to construct out, in Rachel Hauck’s set designs, a 57-foot runway. (“Of course you possibly can’t do it and not using a runway,” she stated.) There are conventional, raked seats, but in addition ones close to the stage, at cafe tables which might be integrated into massive dance numbers.
“We needed to play with the setting of ballroom to create one thing magical for everybody,” stated Arturo Lyons, who choreographed the present with Omari Wiles. They preserved the dancing spirit of “Cats,” and considered motion as means for characters to “come collectively and present their ballroom expertise,” Wiles stated.
“Cats” has all the time been tough to solid. Despite having little plot, it has demanded basic triple threats, performers who may spin out Lloyd Webber’s tuneful songs, survive a dance sequence just like the 10-minute “Jellicle Ball” and, properly, act like a cat. The PAC NYC revival has the added component of ballroom, an idiom that may be simply, embarrassingly fumbled by musical theater artists.
During the casting course of, a staggering vary of performers auditioned, Rauch stated. He and Levingston have been touched by what number of queer Black folks spoke about how “Cats” was, as Rauch described it, “an enormous security valve of queer expression for numerous youth.” Some folks, although, confirmed up considering that “ballroom” meant “ballroom dance” and ready materials extra becoming for “Dancing With the Stars.”
In the tip, the casting drew from theater and ballroom. The two elder roles within the present, Old Deuteronomy and Gus the Theater Cat, have been represented by titans from each worlds: André de Shields from theater and, from ballroom, Junior Labeija, a star of the basic documentary “Paris Is Burning.”
There has been a studying curve for everybody concerned. “It’s undoubtedly been a instructing second,” Wiles stated. “People have needed to study a brand new language — a brand new vogue-cabulary — but in addition study to learn sheet music or course of choreography in a brand new means.”
Chasity Moore, the ballroom veteran, is enjoying Grizabella, which she initially discovered “just a little nerve-racking” as a result of, she stated, “I’d go in and assume, Oh my God, these folks have all these musical backgrounds.” But the identical was true for these actors, who needed to study from Wiles and Lyons to not simply have a ballroom have an effect on, however to persuasively embody it: throwing shade as a spectator, say, or interacting with others as a home mom.
At first, Moore stated, she wasn’t certain a few ballroom-themed “Cats,” and was frightened that it risked appropriation. But she was touched by the manufacturing’s remedy of Grizabella as an icon of previous who comes again to the scene, solely to be spurned by her neighborhood as a result of she has misplaced her youth and fallen on onerous occasions.
“You are solely nearly as good as your final ballroom,” Moore stated. “And a whole lot of occasions, the youthful children don’t do their analysis, and when these older ballroom women come again, they aren’t given one of the best welcome. With Grizabella singing ‘Memory,’ that’s her saying: ‘You’re wanting down on me, however you haven’t any concept what I went by for us. Touch me, I bleed identical to you.”
That sentiment is the soul of “Cats: The Jellicle Ball.” It continues to be an interactive, dance-heavy present, however alongside its athletic leisure is contemporary gravitas, by no means extra evident than within the finale, “The Ad-Dressing of Cats.” In the previous, the tune has attracted giggles, with traces like “So first, your reminiscence I’ll jog and say: A cat shouldn’t be a canine.” Judi Dench sang it, within the film, from a plinth on Trafalgar Square, perched atop the mane of a lion sculpture. But within the PAC NYC revival, the solid members collect intently and proudly ship the foundations for habits of their ballroom.
“What does it imply, by the tip of the present, for Black and brown our bodies who’re additionally queer, on the heart of their very own narrative, to not be asking for permission of the best way to be handled?” Levingston stated. “What if they’re demanding that if you’re in our area, that is what our names are, and that is how it’s best to deal with us? It offers the piece not a distinct message, however a message that’s deeper, and extra pressing.”
