We watched this on YouTube as one of the many media works being made available for free during the global lockdown. My wife and I went to watch the Phantom of the Opera when the global tour arrived in Kuala Lumpur last and we considered going to Cats when it supposed to come this year as well. I argued against that as I thought it was a silly show and indeed it was cancelled way before covid-19, likely because of low advance ticket sales. The debacle that was last year’s star-studded film version only reinforced my poor impression of this musical. But since this is free online, I went along with watching this in full just so that I can finally say that I’ve done it.
Though this particular version dating from 1998 was performed on the stage, it was specifically meant to be filmed for video, hence the lack of any audience, the dynamic camera and the various special effects which were obviously added in post-production. There is no real central plot as the source material is a collection of poems on cats by T.S. Eliot. Hence the musical uses the conceit that this gang of cats gather once a year so that their leader Old Deuteronomy can select one of them to go to the Heaviside Layer, which seems to mean a sort of rebirth. The show then mainly consists of introducing each of the members of the gang, with their own song and dance to tell their respective stories. The emotional center is the character of the old cat Grizabella who was once beautiful and glamorous but is now rejected by the other cats having lost her shine. A little conflict is introduced in the form of an attack on the group by the evil cat Macavity.
I wasn’t inclined to like this much going in and I can’t say that having seen this my impression of it has improved. This is very much a visual spectacle that leans more heavily on the costumes and the dancing than singing. Everyone pretty much only remembers the one song “Memory” from this production and indeed it is the only song that stands out. The dance choreography and the cat costumes are all top notch of course but I have difficulty getting past the silliness of this being a show about furries. To me, all this is pretty much light entertainment with not much heart at all. The Grizabella segments don’t work for me as her lament feels far too affected and it’s so stupid why the other cats shun her while they respect the other old cats like Old Deuteronomy and Gus. I was surprised that there really is a superhero cat in here but that also reinforces the impression that this is just an assembly of random bits and pieces with not much coherence. They don’t even shift locations as everything takes place in the alley or whatever place it is where they gather.
More cynically, I perceive that while the conceit here is about how there are all kinds of different cats, so many of them end up being variations of stage performers of one stripe or another. More proof that people involved in show business can best empathize with performers and dread how old age can ruin a star. Note that the character of Grizabella is original to the musical and doesn’t appear in Eliot’s poetry collection. Finally lyrics that include rhyming Ming with ping still come across as being tasteless even though the more overtly racist bits have long been excised. It’s another indication that this show is very dated and many of the old character archetypes simply don’t exist in the modern context any longer.
It seems to me that this musical achieved its initial success for delivering a pure, exciting spectacle during an era in which it didn’t have much competition. But surely now it has been supplanted by other shows that can offer more in terms of music, dancing technique and even technical sophistication, and that’s not even taking into account the shows with better writing that actually have a theme. At least something like Phantom of the Opera has a timelessness to its love story while Cats will just feel sillier as its ages.