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Mickey Jo (18:51)

Was this dance language created by Gillian Lin that felt, you know, appropriately feline, that was born out of cat like movements. Then adding in an acrobatic and circus element to that and adding in scale and drama feels like a natural extension of that same idea because there's still something very cat like about all of that kind of movement. All of the trapeze stuff and the elegance and athleticism of it is all still very feline. Like, it doesn't feel outlandish, it doesn't feel like a bizarre stretch whatsoever. This feels like a natural continuation of the idea of cats. So let me give you a little bit more of a flavor of how this production worked by explaining a couple of specific concepts that we saw within the show. So already, by the climax of the introductory number, Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats, when there are actually lyrics in there about, like I said, flying through the air on a trapeze, we are already achieving a huge sense of scale on stage, using wires, using suspended hoops, with acrobatics and athleticism alongside dance. And the visual volume of it all is already pretty audacious, and it acquaints the audience with the concept of what this is going to be for the next couple of hours. The challenge is when you then get to the Jellicle Ball, you have to try and top that, right? And you have this huge sweeping moment of music in the Jellicle Ball that demands some sort of huge choreographic sweep to go with it. And this is where you love to see a really smart creative paying attention to the material and sometimes that material doesn't have words. Sometimes that material is just music and. And a feel of what the audience is expecting and what has always been done in that moment combined with the smartness to do something else, to turn it on its head and to know that because you gave us that extraordinary extravaganza of an opening, you could only match it. You can only do the same thing again and give us that same sort of full, dizzying stage picture of all of these performers twirling and flying and flipping over and doing all these different things. And that it would just be a repeat of it. It would still look thrilling, but it. It wouldn't bring it to a new height. So instead you do something visually powerful for its subtlety and for its unison, because they were all in cacophony at the beginning. But there's also something beautiful about the Jellicle Ball bringing them all together. So instead, everyone is holding a balloon and they like, slowly bring them forwards and then eventually thrust them out into the auditorium. And then we are batting the balloons over our heads and kids are playing with them in the interm. Which I think is adorable. It reminded me of the immersive staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream, currently returning to the Bridge Theatre in London. And it's one of those brilliant moments that turns a very sedentary audience into a participatory community. But just what they did with that moment of stillness and something spectacular in its subtlety, I thought was so clever. And there were many more moments as well that took my level of expectation and surpassed it and did something completely different. If you, like me, grew up loving the professionally filmed recording of Cats, you may recall the song Mungo Jerry and Rumble Teaser and how it culminates with this double cartwheel where they grab each other around the waist and they're flipping over each other's heads. That's the big finale. And that's what they do at the start of the song in Circus Cats. Like, they're like, this is going to be our entrance. And then it's only going to get crazier from there. And they have throughout the show with these cats, but with others as well, because there were more pairs of cats in this production to do partner work. Various moments, moments where they are hanging off each other and doing things with trapezes and suspension. Which brings us to the conversation about the empty trapeze that I told you about. And Grizabella. This is going to be a spoiler for the since closed production of Circus Cats, but they gestured to it at one point, and Grizabella's not there at the beginning and there's nobody on it and it is lit and it's just sort of a moment of silence and recognition. It is next gestured to when Grizabella returns. Grizabella, played by Emily Rome, who you may be familiar with, deal with of Ride the Cyclone fame. We'll talk more about performances in a little bit. But she is sort of reaching out in a very forlorn way, as Grizabella tends to, up to the empty trapeze that she can no longer reach because Critically, she's not 30ft tall and it's all the way up there. And the subtext of this is that she's no longer a part of the circus. And perhaps she doesn't even think that she can do it anymore. And she's been outcast for whatever reason that they semi explain in the song Grizabella, the Glamour Cat. But practically it's just because the trapeze is halfway along the track and there's no one from stage management willing to lower the thing to help her. That's really what's happening here, if you think about it. In any case, it does not take a genius to work out where we're going with all of this. And when we eventually get to that iconic crescendo in the music, when she's singing Memory rather than simply rising to her feet, it's a bit of a defying gravity moment because she instead sits on the trapeze that has been brought onto the stage, or maybe it's even a separate trapeze, I forget. And she is elephant into the air above the stage as she's singing Touch Me. It's so easy to leave me. What it's not easy to do in that moment is touch her, because suddenly she's flying several feet above their heads. But gosh darn it, if there isn't something about the simplicity of just flying over a stage. And we can see the wise and we know it's a trapeze. And there is no sense of mystery about how this is happening or that it's going to happen at the end of this number. And it is thrilling nonetheless. There's something about the elegance of her being suspended there and going up at that moment in the music that just works, even if we see it coming. And then, wonderfully, when she is selected to go to the Heaviside Layer, she, Mary Poppins is, that is the official verb, to the back of the auditorium, waving at us all as she goes past slowly as they're singing about the Russell Hotel, for reasons that have never once been clear, clear to anybody in the audience, eventually reaching the back of the circle. I thought we were gonna have done with it. No, no. She comes back. Grizabella returns. Cats too. Grizabella's. Well, not Revenge, because presumably she's thrilled. McCavity's revenge, if anything. But not in this production, for reasons I will tell you. Just wait until we get to that section. So Grizabella returns, trapezes slowly back towards the stage, but not as the Grizabella we remember, looking like a younger, hotter Grizabella who's just taken the death becomes her potion and is suddenly, suddenly full of life once more. I have never conceived, even certainly not seen a production of Cats in which we see the new Jellicle Life actually happen before the end of the performance. That is wild and extraordinary and great. Now, I mentioned Macavity. This once again is a spoiler. But I was so shook by this moment. We have to talk about it. And I have to credit here the brilliant individual who is responsible for projection design. That's Paul de Zeal. Because Macavity, after, you know, perpetrating Cat the and taking away all Deuteronomy and then Mistoffeles magics him back, which, like I said, makes a lot of sense in a production where we're already in a circus and it's like illusions and spectacles and all this stuff. McCavity, then there's a big fight. Mcavity is eventually overpowered. What they do in this production is they bully circle Macavity into the center of the stage area. Macavity then goes up on what I believe is a hoop up into the fly space. And I assumed, based on just like the laws of theater, that that was a narrative enough to just kind of banish him from the area of the stage and therefore he's gone. No, no. There is subsequently a harrowing projection on the back wall in which the silhouette of Macavity is implied explicitly to fall out of the top of the tent, presumably to his death, which segues into a semi sorrowful, semi romantic, sort of a tender and quiet moment. And I'm spending the whole of this aghast, with my hands to my face. Not that I'm feeling sympathetic for Macavity. I just didn't see the mob violence coming in Circus Cats or really any production of Cats, if I'm being honest. Not that it's necessarily out of place. You know, he's. He's done a lot of bad things. He's brought a bad name to the community. I just didn't think we were going to get, you know, mob justice. Murder in circus cats. That was not on my bingo card. Now there are a couple more creative elements I want to talk about before we move on. I want to talk about the cost costuming, which it wasn't obviously circusy necessarily. It felt just sort of like non replica, like a different way of realizing cats. There was a little bit of disparity between some of the cat designs, and they were all cool and interesting. I felt like they either needed to be more distinct or to have a little more continuity between them because they were like. It was like there were two or three different schools of thought present on stage in terms of how we were going to realize the. The cat costuming. Izumi Inaba was the costume costume designer. I did respect the fact that occasionally the costumes had to be altered because performers needed certain areas of grip on their limbs in order to do the work with the wires, which was very impressive. I haven't seen a lot of circus in my life, not really since childhood. And magicians and illusionists make me very nervous. I have an irrational fear of magicians, Certainly circus. I'm not. It doesn't scare me. I was definitely awestruck. And I feel like I'm either a fun or an irritating person to sit next to when there's circus skills happening. Because I am a very quiet theater goer, I do not respond audibly at the theatre. Like, even my laugh is basically silent. And I will just, you know, do my nice British clapping at the end when circus things are happening, I have this involuntary response where I will go, oh.

Nicole Byer (28:55)

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Mickey Jo (28:58)

Feel your body relax, and let go.

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Mickey Jo (30:27)

Or like Ah. And I, I can't stop myself. I get so. I get so wrapped up in the death defying circus stunt. And so, you know, you have to imagine me seeing this production and not only being turned back into a six year old sitting on the carpet of my grandmother's lounge watching Cats on VHS with my sister and you know, dressing up as Mr. Mistoffeles in face Paint, but also watching circus stuff happening as part of Cats and turning into like a fascinated cave person seeing fire for the first time time. That was my experience and a big part of why I loved this so much. Let's finish then, as we always do, by talking about some of these fantastic performance. I did see a couple of brilliant covers on and Cats is a hell of a show to be covering because even to be playing one track is very demanding, especially in a production like this. So shout out out to all of them. Where to even begin with this company? Lorenzo Rush Jr. Vocally as old Deuteronomy. Oh, delicious choices were being made. There were so many little licks and runs, but tasteful, subtle, just little moments in there. In some of the Old Deuteronomy songs, which, you know, it's worth saying are not the most thrilling numbers of the show and can get a little bit repetitive. Lorenzo did a really fantastic job. Of course we have to talk about Emily Rohm as Grizabella. There was one particular vocal choice which I felt was almost a direct tribute to Betty Buckley, who of course was the first actress to play Grizabella on Broadway after Elaine Page originated the role in the West End. I don't know that it was deliberate. I like to think that it was because it sounded so much like something I have listened to Betty Buckley do over and over and over again. And it's the way that she sings Alone like on Alone in the Memory rather than All Alone in the like. There's something about the way that Betty sort of leapt quickly onto Alone and Emily did the same, same thing, but it's worth saying was serving up a vocal masterclass. And if you know Ride the Cyclone, you know that Emily Rome already is an expert in singing in this high and challenging part of her range while suspended over an audience. In fact, I think what she did in Ride the Cyclone, from what I understand, makes just sitting on a trapeze and singing Memory seem like child's play. Or kittens play, perhaps. But she gave us all of the requisite drama and sorrow and eventual jubilation of Grizabella coupled with an astonishing vocal. And that's all that you need to do in that role. And while we're talking about vocals, let's talk about all of them. Donovan Hoffa as the Rum Tum Tugger when making the choice to sing the first section of the Mr. Mistoffelees song up the Octave, I lost my entire mind how thrilling that was. And in the performance of the song the Rum Tum Tum Tugger, it had this sort of like glam rock, Adam Lambert kind of a vibe. It was sensational. I mean, all of these performers did a really fantastic job because the execution of all of the circus stuff and the choreography was just so consistently mind boggling. Some of my particular favorites. Where are you? Mistoffeles Kept catching my eye. Christopher Kelly did a great job. I liked that this production was choreographed, it's worth saying as well, with less strenuous enforcement of the gender binary in the cat world in numbers like Macavity, previously you would have like only the cats identified to be the girl cats doing that number. And from what I could perceive, things were a little bit different in this production and I thoroughly enjoyed that. Cara Brody was terrific as Victoria. Had a wonderful feature dance solo moment. Jean Weigant. I'm so sorry if I'm mispronouncing that name name played Asparagus AKA Gus, as well as Buster for Jones and a character called Peter Buster for Jones. As always, deeply charming and Gus full of pathos and presence. And a particularly brutal ending sung wonderfully by the performer playing Jelly Lorum, who is Alison Sill. I'm not sure that Alison was on at the performance that I saw because like I said, we did have understudies, but it was sung very beautifully. We didn't have the Battle of the Peaks and the Pollicles nor growltiger's last stay in this production. I don't think that we needed it necessarily, but it meant that when we had the phrase at the end when Gus sings and I once played the rumpus cat, I could do it again, I could do it again. Which almost seems to suggest you're about to launch into a flashback or a vision. The fact that we then didn't was brutal. Just like a devastatingly poignant choice as he keeps saying I could do it again, I could play it again. But then he doesn't as his strength sort of seems to fail him. Like I said, I could keep talking about every individual within this company because I think they did such a fantastic job at realizing what I think was a really magical and extraordinary production. I love to see innovation and creativity like this, so it is a huge bravi from me to everyone at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora for their production of Circus Cats. I hope that this may get remounted in the future. It deserves to. And I hope that we see more exciting and inspiring creativity from this them when it comes to other productions that they are producing. If you are even slightly local to the Paramount Theatre, go and check it out. It was a wonderful space to go to. All of the staff were brilliant. The whole theatrical experience was wonderful. You'll be able to see what it was like in a vlog that I am sharing here on YouTube this weekend. But I also hope that we get to see more exciting productions of Cats around the country and around the world in the meantime. Those have been my thoughts about this production and Circus Cats. Thank you so much for listening. If you had the chance to see it or if you were in in it, let us know everything that you thought in the comments section down below. And in the meantime, I hope as always, that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day for 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe Packages by Expedia. You were made to be rechargeable. We were made to package flights, hotels and hammocks for less. Expedia Made to Travel Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Love music. We do too. Well, if you ever feel like it's hard to keep up though, don't worry, we're here to help. 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