Photo: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
“This is not takeoff or satire,” drag queen Dorian Corey famously said to describe the concept of “reality.” paris is burning. “No, it’s actually capable of happening.” The same can be said about jellicle ballXelon Levingston and Bill Rauch’s Ballroom is based on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s outrageously funny and darkly funny musical cats. jellicle ball This is not a satire based easily on the material, nor is it really an internal renewal. The production makes a number of exciting choices to update and modify and comment on the quirky musical unit born out of a posh British love of TS Eliot’s poems for children, but it retains the basic load-bearing elements of the original show. There are cats – portrayed by actors in air-coat style as ballroom performers. They’re gathering for their ball, and they sing all the songs you know. And yet, in placing new contexts and bodies inside the suits of ’80s excess, jellicle ball Re-invents it. Reaching Broadway, jellicle ball It proves itself to be more than a fluke or a flight of fancy. This is fantastic.
It’s a relief, if not unexpected, if you’re up-to-date jellicle news. When this version cats Premiered at the Perelman Performing Arts Center downtown in the summer of 2024, its reception was one of shock and awe: Wait, cats It is possible Good? cats It is possible it Good? And it would be fair to wonder whether it is possible to replicate the same lightning-in-a-bottle effect in the harsh climate of Broadway.
as much as i enjoyed my trip jellicle ball For the first time, upon return I felt stressed, worried that it would not perform well again. For one, there are physical boundaries to an urban space. At the PAC, production scenic designer Rachel Hawk turned the entire space into a runway. in Broadhurst, where cats Now having his own lair, Hawke has brought back the runway and provided some seating on stage to replicate the audience’s proximity to the action. But that runway takes up a tighter space because of the need for clear sight lines for most spectators, and it gives the performers less room to strut. This, in turn, compresses storytelling, making it less democratic. At PAC, Rauch and Levingston could scatter Jellicles across a long rectangular space, causing gleeful chaos in the group’s numbers; Here, the sense of dramatic priority always falls on what is at the centre. A Broadway theater, as it turns out, is architecturally a star vehicle. It sacrifices a certain sense of community but emphasizes the musical solo. This place was made only for Diva Puja.
We can argue further about what was gained and what was lost in the transfer. what powers jellicle ballIn either instance, the intuition is that cultural products from opposite sides of 1980s New York City – megamusicals and drag balls – can talk to each other. On Broadway, the show occupies a home ground of sorts (though it’s actually pretty bad). winter garden is taken), so that the dynamic becomes supercharged. The co-directors have said that they arrived at the idea jellicle ball Intuitively, following Rauch’s impulse to connect the musical to the queer community, and so, appropriately, the production unfolds through a kind of dream logic, or what could be misconstrued as “yes”, and improvisation if Queen Jean’s costumes weren’t so joyful, glamorous and tear-ready. (Oh my god, the giant leopard purse.) A DJ rummages through the vinyl and pulls it out cats There are scenes of our cats primping for their big event, with cast recordings, and those cascading Gothic opening chords of Lloyd Webber’s score – now, of course, the kind of ball that is a competition. Throw in some pounding beats, courtesy of arranger/producer Trevor Holder, and we’re off to the races.
The production wears its metaphors lightly with a wink and a purr. The songs, which originally introduced each cat’s personality, now serve as loose accompaniment to the various categories at the ball. The swaggering Bustopher Jones (Nora Shell) is a High Britannia drag king who displays an attractive body; Fussy Jennyanydots (Xavier Reyes) is a drag mother to her own relatives; Curious and dangerous Rum Tum Tugger (Sydney James Harcourt) is here to show off his masked reality and his butt in a jockstrap. The production knows that its structure can be loose – the audience doesn’t need to care who actually wins in which category – as long as it remains faithful to the logic of showmanship. (The same is true of the original, which would never have lasted so long had it not been for the sexual allure of dancers in bodysuits.)
I would be out of time listing each cat’s name and personality (that’s basically cats is itself), but it’s important that every Jellicle member gets a round of applause for their day in the sun. Omari Wills and Arturo Lyons, jellicle ballThe pair of choreographers, who come from the ballroom scene, are working with a hand-crafted sense of spectacle, variety and – though it may seem contradictory with the show’s ethos – occasional restraint. They know that a stunt move from Macavity (Leomi, a newcomer to Transfer, brings mild pizzazz to his cat burglar) will thrill the crowd, but a single magisterial hand gesture from Old Deuteronomy (Andre De Shields) will be just as effective if properly executed.
Photo: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
There are new guest judges at the ball each night, but 80-year-old Dee Shields becomes its grande dame, provided jellicle ball With authority and history. Much of the show is a heartfelt tribute to New York; They modify a few proper nouns here and there to get us across the pond from London (Mungojerry and Rumpletasser are now from Victoria Grove, New Jersey, and their pronunciations match), and sometimes go for wholesale New Yak-ikana. The highlight of the night comes when Emma dresses up as Sophia’s Skimbleshanks, the Railway Cat, an MTA employee with a showstopping hip-length wig (Nikia Mathis did the hair) and sings some of her verses in Spanish. It’s a few feet over the line of indulgent, but it’s served with such skill and joy that it can’t be anything other than winning.
The presence of true New York veterans like Dee Shields and Junior LaBeiza, who plays the melancholy Gus, the theater cat, gives jellicle ball Implicit credit. LaBeija is an iconic ballroom MC, featured in paris is burningAnd as his Gus reminisces about his cat-like glory days playing “Firefirefield, The Fiend of the Fell” on stage, we see him page through a binder. drama advertisementWhich includes, poignantly, The Wiz (which starred Dee Shields). Amid Eliot’s doggerel, we think about LaBeija and De Shields’s uneven history as queer black artists in New York – LaBeija has said he couldn’t stand to see de shields The Wiz While this was going on – joined together years later. jellicle ball The pseudo-sacrifice moment at the end of the show doesn’t spend much time explaining what “Jellig’s Choice” is. But we understand how pain and death can surround these figures. another link in the middle cats And ballroom: AIDS ravaged both.
jellicle ball It is most dramatically effective when it turns its gaze toward the past, presenting a narrative that is at least vague by nature. cats There’s barely a plot in itself, but the second half of that show includes an injection of drama via the devious Macavity, who’s here to steal some high-fashion clothes. Rauch and Levingston interrupt the police trying to catch the ball in a sequence that is deliberately designed to underscore the notion that this bizarre ecosystem lives with the threat of state violence, as though this is a subject the production doesn’t have the means to properly metabolize. (Lloyd Webber’s little experiments with time signatures won’t help you much there.) And this is where I felt the biggest change in tone between the Broadway and Off Broadway runs. At Broadhurst, the return of old Deuteronomy from captivity through the magic-trick distortions of Mr. Mistoffelees (Robber “Silk” Mason) is less spectacular than I remembered. Is it because Silks are so long that the short runway is an extra disadvantage for them? or that jellicle ball Does he not stay long in awe of the scene for fear of being distracted by his crowd? Were the lights off longer that time, or was my line of sight simply better? Did they downplay the romance between Tugger and Mistoffelees? Was He Concession to tourists? for many jellicle ballThe ballroom exists in miraculous harmony within Broadway, but you can sometimes feel the cold hand of Broadway squeezing in on Broadway.
There’s a tension between celebrating and taking advantage of a marginalized art form, and it persists throughout. jellicle ball. Lloyd Webber’s score is a natural fit for this interpretation because of his magpie tendencies. He writes as if he’s strolling into a “music genre” store and said, “I’ll have one of everything”: some Puccini, some psychedelic rock, and some Gilbert and Sullivan. This, by putting together a difficult show according to the characters’ tastes, looks innovative, as if they’re breaking into a Prada and trying her label on for size. But you can’t shake the feeling that it’s all been paid for with Lloyd Webber’s black card – God himself had to approve the production, and this is one of them. They have greenlighted several reinterpretations of their catalog. Even (or especially) with progressive branding the house always wins.
but for jellicle ballTo its credit, this show is fundamentally about tension, more than just singing cats. And it’s a great subject for a musical. As in the original, we spend most of the production watching the fate of Grizabella, the once fabulous glamor cat now cast aside and made to pace to the side of the stage. Here, played by “Temptress” Chasity Moore, initially with a bruised face of makeup, Grizabella is a former house mother whom the other cats respect and pity but are unable to help much. However, that is until a newbie recognizes him and gives him a chance to return to the stage and perform jellicle ballThe most extraordinary ballroom-plus-Broadway moment when she does “Memory” full-out: Key Changes! a makeover! Spotlight Mix! This gesture is sentimental, pretentious, and in all its glamor proceeded in a way that irritates me. Terms may be compromised, and the moment may be brief. But given any kind of platform, some talent, and enough attitude, a person can transform into whatever real thing they want to be.
Cats: Jellicle Ball is at the Broadhurst Theater.
