Apparently I hadn't consumed enough mescaline to fully understand the first act of Cats and was somewhat bored. Except for the dancing, it had a Fosse feel to it. So I picked out this tall lithe dancer named Stephanie Campbell and promptly decided to fall in love with her. She played 'The Egyptian Cat' I was told. Whatever. What she did was dance so cleanly, with such apparent joy that even though she had no lines you just couldn't help but notice her. There's something about watching someone who can do something really well that makes the whole experience better. She had that 'thing' whatever it is. So a philistine such as myself can recognize that there was some serious, technical dancing going on.
The second act went better and I wasn't struggling for consciousness like IronMan in some eight hour meeting. The orchestra discovered that there are songs that actually contain a MELODY. Who knew? They also dialed back the whole explanation of what Jellicle cats were and why we cared, I can't speak for the great unwashed but I wasn't won over. My daughter however was enthralled which is really cool when you think about it. So the orchestra (which was out of sight and perhaps just a disc) found a melody and there were these kind of short stories that I could follow in the second act and... spaceships? Alien cats that floated off... to the mothership? Maybe the mescaline had started to take hold by then, I'm really not sure what was happening towards the end of the musical except this ancient cat named Deuteronomy selected this other ancient cat named I forget to get on this rock which started floating upward while Deuteronomy got on this lighted spaceship pad looking thing... but it didn't have the lift the rock did so it only went about halfway up spewing fog while we and the rest of the Cats cast watched.
Um, yeah and the second act was the coherent act.
Anyway there was this amazing song called Memory that was sung by the flea bitten rock flying cat. When that girl opened her pipes on that song, well oh my gosh! It was utterly amazing! That one song carried the entire musical for me, well that and Ms. Campbell's remarkable dancing.
Deuteronomy and Flea Bitten Cat attempting liftoff
Check it out. Musicals are fun!
When we got back home the snowplows had wrecked their havoc and we had to actually shovel our way into the garage. My back is pretty sore this Monday morning and there may be a Bill at HEAT tomorrow but then again there may not. Time and Aleve will tell.
I hope you had a great weekend too!
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