Theater Reviews

Mar 20, 2006 - Cats in Reno, now on its 25th anniversary tour, hasn t gotten better with age

By Jack Neal

Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Cats" last visited Reno in September 1999. Now five and-one-half years later and nearing its 25th year as a musical America has embraced ("Cats" opened on Broadway in 1982), "Cats" the musical is not just tired, it's tiring and tiresome.

"Cats" hasn't gotten better with age.

The current cast is talented enough to make the show work. The pit musicians are solid enough to make the music soar. It's the basic ingredient, the musical itself, that doesn't match its hype of popularity. "Cats" played in New York for decades, was sold out in Reno in 1999 and sold out again this past weekend (3/17/06-3/19/06) at Reno s Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts. If people love the show because they really, really love it - so be it. If people behave like they love the show because they think they re supposed to - then that s something else.

T.S. Eliot's eccentric collection of cat doggerel, "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats," on which the book and lyrics for "Cats" are based, are unpretentious and charming and were intended for children. They are, in the musicalization by Lloyd Webber, pretentious, heavy and a puzzlement.

Lloyd Webber is undoubtedly talented. But there's a sameness and an affectation to his writing that's not just wearing thin, it is thin. So much of what he thinks of as his operas – "Joseph and the Amazing Techincolor Dreamcoat," "Jesus Christ Superstar," "Cats," etc. - begin to blur into a same-sound conglomeration. What's left is a musical, in this case "Cats," which never did tell its story clearly. Now it doesn t tell it at all. "Cats" the musical is really "Cats" the variety show. Just lots of acts with but the thinnest of continuity.

To make matters more tenuous, the show s sound - amplified voices and electronic gadgetry masquerading as an orchestra - takes an already bland and most-of-the time banal musical score and underlines its blemishes. What is merely passably attractive music under the best of circumstances, has become only rarely attractive and uncomfortably strident.

The tour orchestrations, credited to Lloyd Webber himself and David Cullen, sound honky-tonk and provide little support for singers and dancers trying to find a pitch and a beat. The result is choreography (by Richard Stafford) that lacks snap of execution and singing that often pushes slightly on the high side of being in tune.

Not cool for the cool cats in the show who turn in, in spite of it all, some fairly cool performances. Jeremy Hays's overindulged Rum Tum Tugger is a delightful send up of a show-bizzy cat. Ryan Patrick Farrell's Mistoffelees is vigorous and magical. Philip Peterson is duly stately as Old Deuteronomy. Cesar Abreu and Josephine Rose Roberts are the charming and vigorous song-and-dance team of Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer. Darla Cardwell is a dazzling Griddlebone. Claire Blakeley's affecting Grizabella is hauntingly brought off. Her singing of "Memory," the Show's only hit, is timely and poignant.

Richard Stafford has choreographed and directed this touring production of "Cats" and has done so without the snap and polish it needs to please as it should. John Napier's costumes are, as they always have been, terrific adventures into fantasy. David Hersey's lighting designs remain one of the show's most handsome attributes.

But without a musical score of beauty and wit managed with sensitivity, attributes galore cannot give this touring company the panache it needs to engage and entertain.

"Cats" was presented in Reno by the Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts as part of its Broadway Comes to Reno series. Performances of "Cats" were Friday and Saturday, March 17 and 18 (2006) at 8:00 p.m. and Saturday, March 18 at 2:00 p.m. and Sunday, March 19 at 2:00 and 7:00 p.m. at The Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts, 100 South Virginia Street, Reno. Remaining Broadway Comes to Reno 2005-2006 shows: "Oklahoma," April 21-23 (2006), "Hairspray," May 16-21 (2006). For information call 775-686-6600.