Hello to all my followers I am alive and doing well, and yes you read that title correctly this is my review of Cats the musical 2023 showing at the Twelfth night theatre, a show that I have seen the night of my writing this but when you read it it will be the next day. Now one thing I should point out during this review that I will acknowledge now is that this was a low budget theatre with a low budget production, now does that mean this is bad? No, does this ruin the enjoyment of the show? No, do the characters and costumes suffer from the low budget quality? I have certain thoughts and feelings.
Anyway just to let you now that I don’t have many photos of the night, I did grab a program but my memory can be horrid and these costumes got me kinda confused, why? Well my first point is that they added new characters but also still had others playing multiple people, I don’t know why they did this perhaps certain characters were alike so they just smushed them together these were mostly the kittens Electra and Etcetera (one person), Carbucketty and Admetus (one person), Macavity and Alonzo (one person), but they also for some reason had two Jemimas and a Sillabub, these just made no sense to me but now here’s a list of new characters in this production.
Hestia (I know who would love this one)
Now what’s more interesting is that these names belonged to both younger and older sets of cats.
Another thing that was different in this production certain male characters were played by females, some of these were kittens but most notably Coricopat and Mungojerrie were both played by women, now I can’t say for certain for Coricopat but for Mungojerrie she did have a deeper voice but it was most definitely a female so now in this production both sets of twins were identical sisters, and yes I do says sisters as Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer acted more like sisters than lovers.
The costumes were very interesting, each were still very different and unique to each person, some cats had yarn tails wrapped around their waist and others had tails connected directly to their costumes. I also noted on some of the cats had different patches of fur on them, overall it made for some very creative costumes and yes Tugger’s costume was a little less grand but his personality made up for it.
Overall this production was smaller but it had the same amount of fun, hilarious and all the round adorable moments you can find in any production of Cats.
Cats moments that I found hilarious:
The two cats who were the most vocal during Tugger’s song were Jennyanydots, and the cat who screamed during the end was Skimbleshanks.
The ‘mating dance’ was a lot shorter and more of a little dance and then a rest, Victoria did the dance with Quaxo but after the intermission Victoria was seen very close to Viktor.
At the end during the finale Tugger and Munk were dancing like brothers before Rumpleteazer and Mungojerrie did the running man infront and around them annoying Munk but Tugger joined in and then before they left offstage Rumpleteazer and Mungojerrie successfully did the worm offstage it was amazing.
They used Gus’s song to Segway to the Peke’s and the Pollicles’ and both Munk and Gus were in control until Gus went offstage to get into his rumpus cat costume. Also Micheal Grover Munk would be so proud that everyone did the show perfectly.
When making the train for Skimbleshanks Tugger grabs a spotlight and becomes the lights, while Bustopher Jones puts a black tube over Quaxo who makes the smoke appear, this moment did earn a few laughs and was very fun to watch everyone shake before the train breaks apart.
Quaxo and Admetus initially were back up for Tugger until Quaxo grew bored and told everyone Tugger was a bore. Tugger then held Bombalurina very closely and leaned over her very sensually before saying no and dropping her with the kittens.
These were my thoughts and feelings about the Cats production. Let me know if I should make a part two where I talk about specific characters.
Tags: @whitmerule , @uppastthejelliclemoon , @strawberry-paint , @rainbowratsstuff
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