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| Okay, you've all seen the little talking chihuahua in the Taco Bell commercials, and you've watched Lassie rescue people who keep falling down holes. But have you ever seen cats who look like humans, or vice versa, and who can dance and sing? Well, if you haven't, get ready for a purr-fect evening when the MGM Grand presents the award-winning musical "Cats" Sept. 7-12 in the Grand Theatre. |
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| Despite its enviable position as the longest-running Broadway musical and longest-running touring show, "Cats" continues to exude a freshness that few productions can match. And yet, anyone seeing "Cats" for the first time might find its lofty status a mystery. |
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| Adults dressed up as cats cavort at a garbage dump for several hours, dancing a show-bizzy version of jazz ballet while singing densely textured lyrics. Some critics have said there is little story and no plot development. Picky, picky, picky. None of that matters. |
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| The touring production is in great shape: sets, costumes and performers all trim, execution of choreography still tight, acting and singing fresh and vigorous. It provides a great forum to catch a bit of musical theater history. One of the musical numbers, of course, is a standout. That is the instantly recognizable "Memory", which has become a contemporary classic sung by everyone from Barbra Streisand to Placido Domingo. It is a song that audiences around the world love. |
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| What's interesting about "Memory" is that composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and director Trevor Nunn realized that they didn't have a big, shot-stopping number just days from opening night. This was in 1981, when they had finished turning T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats into a musical. So Lloyd Webber stayed up late one night and wrote the tune and then gave it to Nunn, who went home and wrote the lyrics. The rest is theatrical history. |
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| But the real reason people hunger to see "Cats" is that it's a musical that transports audiences into a complete fantasy world that could exist only in the theater, and yet rarely does. "Cats" believes in purely theatrical magic and on that faith it unquestionably delivers. |
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| The creative nucleus of Lloyd Webber's team--Nunn, set designer John Napier, and choreographer Gillian Lynne--catapult us into a topsy-turvy foreign universe from the moment we enter the theatre. Napier keeps his Disneyland set popping until finally he and his equally gifted lighting designer, David Hersey, seem to take us both through the roof and back wall of the theatre into an infinity beyond. |
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| The cast completes the illusion. Luxuriantly outfitted in whiskers, electronically glowing eyes, mask-like makeup, and every variety of skin-tight feline costumes on gorgeous bodies, this talented group of singer-dancers quickly sends its fur flying in dozens of distinctive ways. |
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| Nunn and Lynne deserve the credit for using movement to give each cat its own personality, even as they knit the entire company into a cohesive animal kingdom. There are also enough hints at a kind of cosmic spirituality in the cats' emphasis on their interchangeable nine lives, for the audience to feel that they are getting a little more for their money than noise and flash. |
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| T.S. Eliot's rich language give the proceedings an intensity and depth more profound than that of typical musicals. All these elements are what keep audiences coming back. I'm sure that Lloyd Webber never realized when he picked up a book of poems that his mother used to read to him that his musical based on it would break records all over the world. "Cats" continues to play on tour in the United States and internationally, grossing over $2 billion in sales to date. And T.S. Eliot's poems, set to music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, continues to delight children of all ages. |
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