It’s been 44 years since “Cats” — Andrew Lloyd Webber’s skimpily plotted story of singing, dancing felines — premiered in London, the place it ran for an astounding 21 years. Since then, it’s protected to say that in any given week, any person someplace is staging “Cats.” An precise cat’s 9 lives don’t have anything on the ever present seven-time Tony Award winner.
Aurora’s Paramount Theatre final staged the present roughly 11 years in the past.
“Cats” is now again on the far west-suburban theater, in a high-flying, circus spectacular of a manufacturing. These cats don’t simply dance. In director Trent Stork’s participating staging, the cats are contortionists, acrobats and aerialists who fly netless on trapezes, ropes and swaths of silk suspended from the fly house. It’s an idea that elevates the present to thrilling impact.
The circus setting is apropos: “Cats” has all the time been about spectacle. The unique model had cats rising from the stage, perched on a big tire lit up like a Christmas tree. It paved the way in which for Webber spectacles to return, famously the crashing chandelier in “The Phantom of the Opera,” and the swimming pool with a lifeless man floating in it for “Sundown Boulevard.”
Stork’s imaginative and prescient for “Cats,” has spectacle on overdrive. There’s a copious quantity of razzle-dazzle, from a storm of raining glitter to the discharge of dozens of crimson balloons over the viewers. With an ensemble of quadruple-threat actors-singers-dancers-circus artists, the hardly-there plot, impressed by T.S. Eliot’s “Previous Possum’s E book of Sensible Cats,” appears nearly inappropriate.
On the Paramount, a forged of greater than three dozen cats slink and strut over the stage, powering by way of Webber’s simply hummable rating (“Reminiscence…on their own within the mooooonlight”) as they embody Jellicle cats. That identify is defined within the eye-popping opening quantity, “Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats.” It units the tone for a wonderful cirque du surreal.
The Jellicles are gathered to be taught who can be summoned to the Heavyside Layer, a spot the place one cat amongst them can be gifted with one other life. The choice on which cat that can be rests on Previous Deuteronomy (Lorenzo Rush Jr.), a sage elder cat whose seven cat wives have borne him dozens of kittens. Many of the present’s clowder of cats are younger and energetic, save for Grizabella (Emily Rohm), who has been shunned by the youthful cats for causes by no means absolutely defined.
Set inside an enormous large high (extraordinary work by veteran set designer Jeffrey D. Kmiiec) that lights up like a pinball machine, “Cats” includes a sequence of projections, cat portraits crafted by projection designer Paul Deziel that evoke the posters travelling carnivals as soon as used to promote “freak reveals.”
As for the cats themselves, they don’t disappoint. Circus captain Haley Larson has put such a plethora of stunts on stage that it’s laborious to know the place to look typically. “Previous Gumbie Cat” options contortionism from Jennyanydots (Kat Hoil). A cyr wheel — mainly an enormous, light-up hula hoop — sends cats spinning throughout the stage like tops. Mr. Mistoffelees (Christopher Kelley) brings a magic present to the eponymous and rhythmic “Mr. Mistoffelees.” The elusive Macavity (Matthew Weidenbener) seems and disappears with baffling dexterity.
It falls to Grizabella to ship the present’s signature tune, “Reminiscence,” and Rohm does so with vocals that swell past the massive high on stage. Rohm makes Grizabella deeply human and unmistakably relatable. And Rush captures the gravitas and knowledge of Previous Deuteronomy, and powers the rating with a voice of leonine energy.
Choreographer Kasey Alfonso fills the stage with advanced, cat-like motion that’s a pleasure to behold. The all-important costume and fur/make-up design (Izumi Inaba and Katie Cordts, respectively) flip the forged into cat-human hybrids.
Conductor Kory Danielson oversees an eight-person orchestra that captures the present’s various temper, pianissimo to triple forte. “Cats” sounds nice, from the dynamic opener “Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats” to the anthemic fantastic thing about the ultimate act’s “Reminiscence.”
When the finale arrives and the chosen cat is shipped to the Heavyside Layer, Paramount pulls off a flying trapeze sequence soars excessive above the stage swings out over the size of the 1,885-seat home.
Webber’s lyrics will be objectively dumb (“A cat isn’t a canine.”). However on the Paramount, “Cats” lands on its ft.
