Cats The Musical

[firecat]

A production of the stage musical Cats, 40th Anniversary (god I feel old), is free on Youtube right now as a charity fundraiser. I think the last day is today and it's still available only in the US.

I'm remembering how much I like the song "Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats." The rhythmic complexity! The rest of the music is better than I remembered.

The stage musical video (captioned)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=EX0PVPqmIDs

(The main reason I like this show is pretty shallow: the makeup and costumes are pretty cool from a cosplay standpoint. Also the dancing is usually good. I saw it on Broadway in the 80s but it's more fun to watch this because I'm not in the nosebleed seats.)

Comments

[alexcat]

I saw it on Broadway in the 90s and a Japanese man in a suit with gallons of perfume slept through it. My daughter was a big fan.

[firecat]

The perfume sounds unpleasant!

[umadoshi]

*investigates*

Ahhhh, it's that odd filmed version from the '90s. I have...complicated feelings about that version, but the cast is fantastic. Cats was my gateway musical and is still a favorite, because it's an amazing spectacle when done well. People just keep expecting it to have, like, plot.

(I hold out hope that someday there'll be a release of an actual filmed-live performance with the unaltered makeup and the choreography filmed so you can actually see it all properly.)

[firecat]

I am interested in your complicated feelings.

Are there other filmed versions, other than the recent movie with Elba, Dench, etc.?

[umadoshi]

Are there other filmed versions, other than the recent movie with Elba, Dench, etc.?

Alas, no, at least in practical terms. I have the impression that there are archival recordings of most/all Broadway shows in one of the libraries/archives in New York, but with fairly restricted access, and this 1998 version is meant to be the ~official recording of the stage production~ (and people, probably unknowingly, INSIST on referring to it as being, like, the Original Broadway Cast, which is just annoying).

The cast of this version is great! But I hate a lot of things about it. Some of them are relatively minor, like the fact that the makeup designs aren't what's used (or what was being used then) for stage; they got tweaked noticeably to ~look better on film/in closeups~.

I'm mostly fine with the fact that the audio was dubbed in later, not recorded live, because most or all of the cast were also working the London production at the time and were saving their voices for the live performances. (IIRC--I haven't thought about details for years, and I'm not looking things up now--what happened was the touring production over there was halted for the duration so that its set could be used for this video rather than disrupting the main London set.) But at least one of the actors on screen (Jemima/Sillabub, whichever name was used for her) isn't the person singing, and I'm irrationally grumpy about it. If the actor on screen is good enough to be in the stage production at all, she's presumably got the vocal chops to do the recording.

But the main thing is I genuinely hate the way the show was filmed for this. They deliberately cut away from the choreography over and over again to do closeups on individual cats, and--again, from my very dusty memories of this--people said it was done specifically so no one could just lift the choreography wholesale for the major dance numbers. It's not so bad in all of the numbers, but to produce something like this and NOT do everything possible to really showcase the dancing is utter bullshit. The dancing is the point of Cats. The music is catchy and it's all a fun good time if you don't think about it too hard, but the dancing is why it's magical when done live (and done well--I've seen both a poor production and a "MEH, it was fine" production, in addition to seeing it done beautifully four times).

(I don't actually care about the cuts made to it, really. That performance of Gus the Theatre Cat is well worth losing Growltiger over, although I might feel differently if Growltiger as it stood then were less grossly racist. [Last time I saw Cats--the MEH performance--Growltiger was still in the show but had been cut down to scrub as much of the racism from it as possible.])

So basically I've been grumpy about this version since the day the DVD was released and I saw what they'd done to it. ^^; And now I have bonus grumpiness because it so often gets talked about as The! Definitive! Version! and it's not actually all that good. In my heavily biased opinion.

[firecat]

Thanks for this! I appreciate knowing all these details about the version I watched.

Yeah, I was frustrated at the editing choices for the dance numbers.

I’ll be right behind you in line to pick up a filmed live performance!

[mdlbear]

I own that DVD; see Cats (1998 film) - Wikipedia. There are major cuts, but it's pretty good -- the reprise of "Memories" still got me choked up. I am highly suspicious of the 2019 film version.

See also: Cats (musical) - Wikipedia. Colleen and I saw it on Broadway during one of our rare trips East to visit my parents when they lived in Connecticut.

[umadoshi]

*points up to (warning: grumpy) reply to firecat*

I've owned that DVD since the day it came out (and have been grumpy about it just as long), and have seen the show on stage six times, although one production was bad enough that I feel bad counting it. But it was a professional production, not something hacked up for a school show or anything, so...it's on the list.

[mdlbear]

I agree with all of your grumpy comments. But I only saw it live once, and I'm very unlikely to see it live again. So I'll make do with that version until there's a better one. If ever.

[firecat]

Yeah I bawled my eyes out over that. It’s been a LONG time since any filmed entertainment made me cry, and I think I needed it.

[moongoddex]

Omg, I have memories of seeing it live quite young after playing the VHS and cassette tapes half to death :D I'll have to see if I can convince the internet I'm American for the evening ;)

[firecat]

I misdescribed the restriction — it’s not available in the UK (they got it for 24 hours, not 48), but available everywhere else.