Cats – Civic Theatre September

 

Andrew Lloyd Webber, it turns out, anticipated the World Wide Web and its greatest preoccupation. Following the criminally underrated Variations, and shortly before he lost the plot and decided that trains on rollerskates would make a compelling theme for a musical, Lloyd Webber recognised the world’s fascination with cats, and one of the West End’s longest-running musicals was born. The 2014 London revival of Cats proving hugely successful, the southern hemisphere tour held its gala opening last night at Auckland’s Civic Theatre.

Cats is, in essence, a song-and-dance production based on T.S. Elliot’s Old Possum’s Book Of Practical Cats; in practice it’s a quite mesmerising performance. I am, I’ll confess from the start, not a huge fan of dance; I am, however, a fan, of long standing, of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s earlier work. Catswent a long way to winning me over as a dance piece – the felinity of the movement on last night’s stage was simply astonishing. Dressed in, well, catsuits that, in certain lighting, lost their wearers in the junk-yard set, the cast of Cats move, quite simply, like cats, with grace and energy and fluidity and suppleness that at times beggars belief, thanks in no small part to Gillian Lynne’s choreography.

But I was, to be honest, there for the music, and was pleased with what I heard. Accompanied by a live orchestra, the largely Australian cast were outstanding. It’s hard to single out individual performances in what is very much an ensemble piece, but there were highlights. Sophia Ragavelas, a tiny presence on stage with a huge voice, gained huge applause for Memories, the big set-piece hit of the show, teased a couple of times by her and other singers before her showcase performance in the second act. Matt McFarlane, singing in a marvellous rich tenor while managing to look like John Cleese in a leotard, was the closest the show has to a narrator in Munkustrap, while Jason Wasley’s baritone gave depth and power to Old Deuteronomy.

The star of the show, though, was Daniel Assetta. As The Rum Tum Tugger, Assetta performed the best song in the show, Mr. Mistoffelees, with a swing that showcased his superb voice. He also, to be fair, had possibly the weakest moment in the performance, too, a hip-hop addition to The Rum Tum Tugger that was, presumably, shoehorned in some time in the 1990s to make Cats a little more street, a touch more edgy, but simply doesn’t work, despite Assetta’s best efforts.

By the end of the first act, after highpoints like MungoJerry & Rumpleteazer, as well as lows like the entirely unnecessary The Awefull Battle of The Pekes and the Pollicles, added, presumably, to placate doglovers, some of the younger members of the audience, the ones who showed up with cat ears on their heads and who had whiskers painted on their faces by the makeup artists in the bar before the show, were starting to get a little restless; the seats next to me were empty for the second act – a shame, since Act II had little of the padding and filler of the first.

I’m not, then, a convert to dance; I’ll not, even on the strength of Cats, seek out new dance performances. But Cats ran in London for twenty-one years; I think, now, I understand why.

Steve McCabe