Cats was the behemoth of 80’s Broadway until Andrew Lloyd Weber one-upped himself with Phantom of the Opera. However, there’s a quote from Angels in America that really fits this show: “Cats. It’s about cats. Singing cats. You’ll love it.”
I don’t love Cats, but I find the show interesting. The best way to consider this show is as the best theater for children ever made. For children, this show is clever, fun, not too challenging, but with a little smidgen of thought that your average ice capades wouldn’t include. As a Tony Award winning Broadway show—I think it’s a little bit weak. Not that it shouldn’t have won, this show was one of the biggest of that era, It’s just very very simple, and not always in the good way, a bit too darling for my tastes, and the book could have been written by Spielberg when he was coming off of E.T. And the whole thing just screams 80’s. The costuming–how they look like if Kiss had made themselves some cat costumes by way of an 80’s mall. (I mean look at this group up here and compare them to the USA in Africa group a few years later.) And each one is just slightly different, so you can buy all the figures!!!!! Talk about marketing!
This does have the huge song Memory in it–which deservedly is the breakaway song, however much it doesn’t really fit with all the other songs we hear. Lots of feline dancing, a big junkyard, a tractor tire space ship to reincarnation. Characters named Rum-Tum-Tugger, and Teacozy and I don’t know what.
Again, like all the other mega-musicals, the star is a thing–here it’s the dancers’ makeup. There’s no progression, just song after song after song, which get samey after a bit. Gotta say one thing–Andrew Lloyd Weber certainly knows what to bank on. This show was HUUGE.
pewterbreath 