The drag-ballroom documentary “Paris Is Burning” opened in 1990, eight years after Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Cats” debuted on Broadway. Those two very unlikely bed fellows now meet, and their love child proves only one thing: gay and trans people of color have just as bad taste in show tunes as all the white straight people who turned the original “Cats” into the McDonald’s of musicals.
The new “Cats” carries the subhead “The Jellicle Ball,” and that colorful but ultimately exhausting version opened Monday at the Broadhurst Theatre, after a stint last year at the Perelman Performing Arts Center. Gone are the feline costumes with long whiskers and the artfully torn leg warmers, those cute outfits now resting in a dumpster somewhere in the show’s original junkyard locale. Set at a ballroom competition in Harlem, “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” features two dozen performers wearing Qween Jean’s extravagant diva outfits and Nikiya Mathis’ enormous Day-Glow wigs. These wild costumes don’t stop the show; they keep it moving when the original score stalls and sputters.
“Appropriate” is the dirtiest word in the arts today, and one might feel sorry for Lloyd Webber for having his material spayed in this way by directors Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch. In fact, the only thing that makes this “Cats” worth watching is the ballroom environment of high-and-low drag that gets dropped like a bottle of Pooph onto Lloyd Webber’s litter box of a musical.
I’ll get to “Memory” in a moment, but every other song in “Cats” is rinky-tink to the extreme. Only when William Waldrop’s orchestrations riff by imposing a bump, stomp and grind rhythm to the original score does this “Cats” spring alive to grow painted claws. When there’s dancing, the musical soars. When there’s singing, the musical shows it age. Fortunately, the cast really knows how to wear clothes and strut, with Omari Wiles and Arturo Lyons’ choreography giving the dancers ample room to show off their incredible extension and flexibility. More stripping and display of bare skin would have been nice. Curiously, this “Cats” comes off as a PG-rated “Broadway Bares,” the exceptions being Baby Byrne’s slinkier-than-thou White Cat and Sydney James Harcourt’s hot-hot-hot Rum Tum Tugger, who’s more than ready for a Grindr hook-up. A shout-out also has to go to Primo Thee Ballerino, playing Tumblebrutus, the most beguiling dancer now on Broadway.
Andre De Shields is Old Deuteronomy, and to show his seniority among the voguers, he wears a wig snatched from Sam Jaffe’s head in “Lost Horizon” and walks with all the aplomb of President Cankles.
In the role of Grizabella, “Tempress” Chastity Moore, sounding off-pitch and tired, gets to sing “Memory” a lot. Has any song even been more reprised than this tear-jerker? Levingston and Rauch powder the profiterole by having Grizabella come back in Act 2 as her younger, glamorous self, where she’s courted by Teddy Wilson Jr.’s Sillabub, who wears a crown of sunflowers, and strews Grizabella’s path with glitter and sings “Memory” in a weepy falsetto.
In “Paris Is Burning,” the ballrooms are populated with contestants fighting to get their moment in the spotlight. Downtown at the Perelman, Rachel Hauck’s warehouse set featured a far too spacious runway that worked to dilute the drama. At the Broadhurst, the stage now looks appropriately cramped and crowded. Less is more, and the tiny runway overflows with action and egos.
One inspired moment at the Perelman has been cut. When Grizabella ascended to her death, she opened a door at the top of the stairs and the theater suddenly filled with street noise. She hadn’t gone to heaven; she simply needed a breath of fresh early-morning air after being trapped in the hothouse world of ballroom competitions. At the Broadhurst, that comic irony is lost, replaced with a big clunky spiral staircase.
Many Broadway shows now run 90 minutes. At two and a half hours, this “Cats” could use a real demon barber. While Jamie Lloyd’s recent direction of “Sunset Blvd.” rendered the story incomprehensible, it was wise to cut some of the score. Any Lloyd Webber musical is improved when there are fewer songs.
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