By Brooklynn Wong
Opening night of the one-week-only run of “Cats” at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts was a sell-out, with theater patrons coming from far and wide to pack out Segerstrom Hall, to see one of the world’s best-loved musicals.
And the show lived up to its expectations. The impressive sets painted an industrially gorgeous scene of a junkyard, complete with string lights running across the ceiling from the stage out to the house. And the performance was not confined to the stage. As they typically do, the cats darted in and out of the audience, with “The Rum Tum Tugger” sitting amongst the audience for a time, and various cats emerging from the house to make their way to the stage for their introductions.
The musical tells the tale of the “Jellicle Cats” a colony that gathers one night a year under the Jellicle moon for the Jellicle ball, to choose which of these Jellicle cats will be the chosen one to “journey to the Heaviside Layer,” or, in non-Jellicle terms, to be reincarnated and begin its next life.
It is based on a book by T.S. Eliot, “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats,” written in the 1930s, telling tales of various aspects of feline life.
In the 1980s it was adapted into a musical with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, directed by Trevor Nunn and choreographed by Gillian Lynne.
A live orchestra performed the music. Effects including noise and lights added to the show, but the best part of course was the performers themselves. They moved across the stage with the light and stealthy movement of a clowder of cats.
Their acrobatics while singing beautifully made the meeting of the Jellicle cats a joy to observe.
The aforementioned Rum Tum Tugger (McGee Maddox) grabs the viewer early with his charisma and particularly catchy tune. We are then introduced to the eerily captivating Grizabella (Keri Rene Fuller) and her tragic tale.
Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer (Tony d’Alelio and Rose Iannaccone) are wildly entertaining, and Old Deuteronomy (Brandon Michael Nase) is endearing in his role as the aging gentle patriarch.
The “Macavity, The Mystery Cat” number is also particularly entertaining.
The most flashy and crowd-pleasing number is “Magical Mister Mistoffelees,” in which Tion Gaston as its namesake descends from the ceiling and high-flies his way across the stage all while wearing a lit-up and color-changing coat.
And all iterations of “Memory” as sung by Grizabella are beautiful, but the showstopper comes in the last one, just before the end of the show, where she is selected as the cat that will be reborn and begin life anew. She is down on all fours and then rises to deliver the powerful crescendo in a moment that brings a tear to the eye. And the moment with the best quiet pathos is when the colony then embraces Grizabella, literally and figuratively, now understanding and accepting her where they steered clear of her, hissed at her, and lashed out at her before.
And the last musical number, “The Ad-dressing of Cats” is a satisfactory end with charming lyrics.
It all adds up to one wildly entertaining, very well-done production that preserves and celebrates Andrew Lloyd Webber’s original and T.S. Eliot’s poetry.
The show’s stay in Orange County has already wrapped up, but it will play at San Diego’s Civic Theater through April 21 before leaving the state.
