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Purrfect theatre magic
Cats
Birmingham Hippodrome
***** ON the face of it a slim children’s book
of just 15 short poems about cats is hardly the stuff of award winning
musicals. Yet from such unpromising material Andrew Lloyd Webber produced a piece of theatrical magic. It breaks all the rules. For a start there are no humans, just a group of
cats inhabiting a rubbish dump, there is no real dialogue and no
narrative to speak of while the whole show is an extended, feline dance,
slinking and stretching across the stage. The magic worked though and Cats, which opened in
1981, ran for 21 years in the West End and 18 years on Broadway. T S Elliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats
was a favourite book of the young Lloyd Webber and became the
inspiration for the musical although the most famous song of the show,
Memory, which rapidly became a standard, had nothing to do with
cats or Old Possum but had its origins in another Elliot poem, an early
dreamwork, Rhapsody on a Windy Night, said to be about the
slightly sinister streets of midnight Paris. Not that that matters with such a wonderful song
and Sophia Ragavelas as the fading glamour puss, Grizabella wrings out
every last purr of emotion in a performance that tingles the spine. We join the cats of the Jellicle tribe on the
night of the Jellicle Ball when one cat will be reborn into a new life,
selected by the mystical elder of the tribe, Old Deuteronomy, played
with a splendid baritone by Nicholas Pound. Narrated by Munkustrap, played by Callum Train we
are introduced to Gus, played by Paul F Monaghan, an old and shabby
gentile tom these days, a former Thespian who once strutted the stages
as a star of the West End. Monaghan also gave us Bustopher Jones, a real 25
pounder, in tux and spats, who frequents the clubs of St James’s and
Growltiger, a pirate part once played by Gus in his younger days. We meet the amusing cat burglars Mungojerrie
(Barnaby Thompson) and Rumpleteazer (Dawn Williams) who end their dance
with a spectacular double windmill across the stage and warm and
friendly Skimbleshanks (Ross Finnie) the railway cat who is so important
that the night train to Glasgow cannot leave if he is not on board. Less energetic is Jennyanydots (Francesca Whiffin),
a large, comfortable tabby, why sits and lies around all day – familiar
to cat owners everywhere.
For flash and flamboyant we have the Rum Tum
Tugger, with a lion’s mane and permanent swagger played by Italian
musical theatre star Filippo Strocchi, while we get sinister in the form
of Macavity (Cameron Ball) who kidnaps Old Deuteronomy and then tries to
impersonate him before a fight with Munkustrap. As the other cats gang
upon him Macavity fuses all the lights and vanishes. That brings in ballet dancer Joseph Poulton as Mr
Mistoffelees, with his years of ballet training showing in his conjuring
turn when we have a succession of fouettés en tournant, Balletic spins
on one leg, 24 of them so I am told. His is the most technically
demanding and spectacular dance solo in the show but he is brought in
not just for his dancing but also his magic, restoring the lights and
bringing back Old Deuteronomy. There is fabulous feline support from the
ensemble, or perhaps we should say clowder with the likes of Hannah
Kenna Thomas as fluffy white Victoria and Clare Rickard as the even
fluffier Griddlebone, Growltiger’s lover in Growtiger’s Last Stand.
She also provides us with Jellylorum, who tells us the sad tale of
the decline of the great Gus, the theatre cat. The production benefits from glorious cat
costumes and an ingenious rubbish dump set from John Napier which
spreads, as rubbish tends to do, into the auditorium, with old cookers
and cars providing hideaways among the tyres and brass bedsteads. The dramatic lighting, designed by David Hersey,
also extends into the auditorium with strings of lights stretched across
the roof, in fact everything extends into the auditorium with the fourth
wall being removed and cats regularly slinking along the aisles and
purring among the punters. Music comes from an excellent eight piece
orchestra under musical director Anthony Gabriele while the original
direction from Trevor Nunn and stunning choreography from Gillian Lynne
turn a crazy idea into an enchanted evening that can be enjoyed by all
the family. If you haven’t seen it then this is your chance to see what
the puss, sorry, fuss is about. To 27-09-14 Roger Clarke
10-09-14
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