I fell for this show downtown, and I love it still, even though Hauck’s catwalk-in-a-club structure fits less comfortably into the Broadhurst than it did into the long, narrow Off Broadway space. And uptown, Eliot’s lyrics seem even harder to hear, which gives everything an additional sheen of surreality. There is a cat, for instance, who dances with a MetroCard, and if you don’t understand the stanza about the “railway train,” you are … look, sometimes a cat has a MetroCard.
If you’re lucky enough to have a knowledgeable and prepared audience around you, the atmosphere at the ball crackles — literally. Those sitting close, at the set’s little bar tables, egg on the performers; theatergoers snap huge fans, which creates a kind of thundering paper applause. I too felt like clapping for hour after hour.
Because what we do hear is spectacular. The text contains relevant echoes, so many that they seem to go beyond coincidence: “Jellicle cats are black and white!” the not-cats sing, looking at one another meaningfully, or they land, a little heavily, on the phrase “come out tonight.” Eliot’s poems insist that cats keep a secret, true name (“there’s the name that the family use daily,” which is a useful fiction for the straight world), and the Jellicles wander across a city that sometimes strokes them, sometimes starves and abuses them. In its most pointed lyrical moments, the show insists on the right of these self-possessed, slinky creatures to be seen and admired but also, when they wish it, to be left alone.
The most complex characterization is left to Grizabella, who both wishes for the spotlight but also shies away from it. “I can smile at the old days / I was beautiful then,” Moore sings, in her extraordinary rendition of “Memory” — a song that starts as sentimental gloop and ends, somehow, with staggering power. It was the only moment when I thought that the original lyrics didn’t quite coincide with the world of this show. Who, in the name of Deuteronomy, was beautiful then? They’re all so beautiful now.
Cats: The Jellicle Ball
At the Broadhurst Theater, Manhattan; catsthejellicleball.com. Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes.
