Lloyd Webber’s feline classic has yet another life, in 40th-anniversary production
“We’re making history here,” says tour production director Amy Berrisford. catsHe just landed at Hamer Hall (on all fours, naturally). “We are the first major, full-scale musical production at this theatre.”
This may be hard to believe. After all, the Roy Grounds-designed concert hall opened in 1982 and underwent a renovation – similar to what is currently being done at the neighboring State Theater – before reopening in 2012. But that’s about the lack of a proscenium arch.
Berrisford explains that a concert hall is an open space, whereas a theater is like a magic box, where the arch is used to hide all manner of artifice (lighting rigs, curtains, entrances and exits, scenery). And without it, the realization of great musical theater would not have been possible until now.
“The technical team spent a long time designing, organizing and having meetings on how we were going to do this, and they came in and built a proscenium arch,” says Berrisford. “It’s pretty incredible.”
Of course, none of this matters to the average punter sitting in the theatre. They’re just there to have a good time. And cats It definitely provides this.
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical about a group of stray cats arose from a kind of technical exercise: He wanted to see if he could write music to pre-existing words, in this case TS Eliot’s 1939 poetry collection. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. The composer only realized the possibility of a full-fledged musical when he presented Eliot’s widow, Valerie, with an unpublished poem about Grizabella the Flashy Cat.
First performed in 1981 cats It became one of the most successful musical theater plays ever conceived. It ran for 21 years in London’s West End and on Broadway for 18 years, and has been translated into 23 languages. This production celebrates the 40th anniversary of its first performance in Australia.
“I was lucky enough to participate in the original Melbourne season in 1987, where I was the youngest member of the company,” says Todd McKenney, who plays two cats named Bustopher Jones and Asparagus in this iteration. “And here I am, 38 years later, the oldest member of the company. I’m 60 in Lycra, and that alone is worth the price of admission.”
It’s certainly a spectacle, with 23 oversized cats skulking around the stage, singing and dancing along a garbage-strewn alley set. But leave a thought to the artists themselves.
“It’s tough,” says Berrisford. “There’s a lot of crawling on the knees, especially for the kittens; they’re always on the ground. We have to make the audience believe that we’re really cats.”
For this purpose, watching cat videos on YouTube is encouraged. “Everyone [in the cast] They have their own moments and can develop their own cats and do a lot of research themselves.
Naturally there is a herd of catsmore. Everyone is affected by the rigors of cat school during the rehearsal period, and occasionally during the run if someone strays too far from the metaphorical stop, everyone is affected by the rigors of cat school.
“At the beginning of the day, for about half an hour, we would do cats crawling, prowling, sniffing – all the senses, the sense of sight, the sounds, how we respond as cats, how we smell, how we touch and work our paws, how we get used to the tail,” says Berrisford. “And we would sit down and discuss how we would feel.”
As for what it’s about? The jury is still out.
“I’ve been doing this for 38 years and I still have no idea,” McKenney says. “Plot nonsense.”
But Berrisford, who played Demeter in the last local production in 2016, insists that a narrative exists.
“There’s an underlying story of forgiveness and redemption and, in the human sense, of people going through tough times. It’s about coming together and what happiness is.
“So yeah, there’s a lot of dancing, a lot of fun, lots of cats and a good night out, but there’s also a strong story underneath it all.”
cats It runs at Hamer Hall at the Melbourne Arts Center until January 31. Details: catsthemusical.com.au
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