It’s three typical cat-lives since Andrew Lloyd Webber and Trevor Nunn staged TS Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats as a musical. The piece can’t quite shake the feel of being a cleverly fashioned showcase for individual performers whose component parts are not totally stitched together. But 45 years on, it can still surprise.
Drew McOnie, in charge at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, is a director who can be relied upon to freshen up familiar material, as he did in his small-forces update of Nutcracker at the SBC. This isn’t a radically rethought CATS, as that production was, but its packaging is startling. The annual Jellicle Ball, where one cat will be chosen to be reborn into another of its nine lives, is still what it was intended as, an uplifting emotional occasion built out of the Jellicle cats’ affectionate support for each other, expressed by the cats pressing up against each other to form a wedge of unified bodies. Just one of McOnie’s inventive touches as the production’s choreographer, too.
He gives the corps a mix of moves from all areas of dance: modern musical theatre, ballet, contemporary dance, jazz-hand ensembles, but with his own twist. Arm and hand moves are a particular focus in the ensemble sections, often aggressive and unusual. Elsewhere he retools classical steps, such as Patricia Zhou as Cassandra executing fine arabesques (pictured below), some of them while turning in a circle or moving backwards. McAvity (a demonic, spike-backed Diante Lodge), when he finally appears, could have sprung out of a modern dance piece, all dramatic lines and high-energy leaps, whereas Mr Mistoffeles (Jet Yau) gives a hiphop masterclass, from body-popping to twirling headstands, and the cat burglars Rumpleteezer (Briana Craig) and Mungojerrie (Danny Nattrass) perform a routine that’s as exhilaratingly danced as it is comic. This is a gifted, acrobatic troupe who can do it all.
The production also has a great set/costume/wigs designer, Sami Fendall. Her set is the most striking I have seen at this address: its main structure is a fractured rust-red circle, with a moon transiting overhead, rather as if the Planet of the Apes had a garden centre made of the remains of a giant half-buried flowerpot. Out of this structure billowing clouds of dry ice appear, creating a lovely visual effect as the company are silhouetted against them.
Fendall’s costuming alone is worth making the trek for. The corps wear mostly variations of patterned leotards with a meaty tail at the back, their hairstyles coaxed into curls round their prominent ears, their eye makeup just the right degree away from being over-catty. Mercifully, their slinky moves aren’t simplistically feline; they project character rather than species. And their facial fur is kept to a minimum.
The star turns are given special styling. Crowd-pleaser Bustopher Jones (Elliot Broadfoot) wears a dramatic silver jacket over a black petticoat like an inverted cone, a bowler on his head that has spaces for his ears to poke through. Old Deuteronomy (Melanie La Barrie), the sage, commanding master of ceremonies at the Jellicle Ball, has a voluminous coat and matching pantaloons that look as if they are made from thousands of scraps of tissue paper, while sad Grizabella (Taziva) Faye Katsande) uniquely wears a dress, a pale affair with ragged edges, befitting her bedraggled lifestyle. Only the cod-medieval costume of Jennyanynotes (Charlotte Riby, pictured below) attempts to mirror her plumptious ginger-tabby body.
Riby is one of several standout vocalists in the cast, with a rich, rock-steady voice and a knowing smile that sets up a terrific rapport with the audience. Lucie Mae-Sumner’s silvery-toned Jellylorum is another, while Matthew Caputo as Skimbleshanks impressively delivers the steam-train song from on top of a moving, steam-belching engine, And as Rum Tum Tugger, Jaydon Vin has his own private ball as a sexy lead from a 1980s rock band, all suggestive pelvic thrusts and flashing eyes, his lower body clothed in lightly flared trousers and his chest wrapped in a tight woven-leather bodice, its fringing echoing his straggly ‘do.
A special mention for Gary Wilmot, a leonine, grey-haired Growl, who sports a voluminous patchwork robe and the manner of a thespian grandee who derides “these modern productions” and harks back to his days of playing a valiant ship’s captain fending off Siamese-cat pirates (whose flag, naturally, is a cat and crossbones). The intricacy of his face makeup, as with La Barrie’s, is a marvel.
And another bouquet for Katsande, who stood in for an indisposed Rachael Wooding as Grizbella and found herself in the opening night spotlight for the show’s most, um, memorable number, "Memory", which closes both halves. She has the modern musicals habit of sliding up to notes rather than hitting them head on, but she made up for this with characterful phrasing that lays bare the poignant emotions behind them; and for the final verse in the second-half reprise, she really pulled out the stops, belting out the lyrics with a searing passion. The audience went wild.
Will this odd piece make new converts? Probably, if only because it’s performed by all involved, including a hidden 12-piece band, with such gusto and expertise.
