Cats

Is it really 25 years – almost half a lifetime – since I first saw Cats?

Like so many other Aussie musical theatre fans of my generation, I absorbed the original London recording for four years after the show’s West End premiere, anticipating a unique musical theatre experience.

When Cats finally arrived in 1985, with its stellar original Australian cast, performing on a rubbish tip extending into the auditorium of Sydney’s Theatre Royal, I was hooked.

No revival will equal that initial impact for me, its novelty and surprise value has long passed, but there’s genuine pleasure to be had in seeing the show in the hands of a whole new generation of Australian musical theatre talent.

Twenty-five years is a long time in cat years, and there’s lots about Cats’ costuming and technicals that dates the production, but the current cast who were, perhaps, kittens back then, breathes fresh energy into this latest life of Cats. This company is a terrific, balanced ensemble who give the show their all.

This touring production is somewhat scaled back. The orchestra has been mostly replaced by synthesized accompaniment, sometimes lacking the richness and depth of the original, while the set, also a touring design, doesn’t stretch into the venue in the same sort of way.

Still, Gillian Lynne’s landmark choreography, danced with gusto by an impressive dancing company, remains one-of-a-kind.

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s settings of TS Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, especially character songs like Mungojerrie And Rumpleteazer, Bustopher Jones, Gus: The Theatre Cat / Growltiger's Last Stand, Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat and the vampish Macavity: The Mystery Cat, retain their charm. Memory, too, is resurrected from the realm of musical theatre cliché when rendered by Deliah Hannah in its original context.

I entered the theatre with a doubt or two, but left feeling a familiar musical theatre friend still had one or more of its nine lives remaining in the hands of talented new generations of performers.

Neil Litchfield

Photo: Brenton Wilson as Mungojerry and Justine Puy as Rumpleteaser.