[title]
★★★
Looking back at the reviews, a now-underappreciated element of the dire reception afforded to the 2019 film version of Cats is not the CGI bumholes but the fact that the movie critics were genuinely bewildered as to the classic Andrew Lloyd Webber musical’s lack of discernible plot.
Watching a new stage production of Cats in 2026 is a similar experience: I know that the original West End production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s puss-tastic opus is one of the most popular shows in human history. But there are points during this first ever UK revival’s revue-like journey through a series of skits about (duh) cats – based on TS Eliot’s 1939 kids’ poetry collection Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats – where I wondered whether its previous success wasn’t some form of elaborate hoax perpetuated on later generations. It’s not that its mix of Edwardian-style whimsy, ‘80s-style synths and oompah-oompah vaudeville isn’t endearing. It’s just difficult to watch it and fathom how this was so popular that it ran for 20 years.
Of course, this isn’t the original production, and nobody’s expecting it to run for another 20 years. Drew McOnie’s revival is less radical than the OAT’s lauded recent takes on Webber’s Evita and Jesus Christ Superstar, or indeed Tom Hooper’s fever dream film. But it does, nonetheless, feel like a smaller and edgier thing than Trevor Nunn’s blockbuster original.
The titular Jellicle Cats are both familiar but also grungier and less cosy than their leg warmer-clad 1981 forbears. The biggest difference between the two incarnations of Cats probably lies in the choreography – high energy and aerobic in the original (by Gillian Lynne), sinuous and twitchy under McOnie. It’s very telling that he’s a director-choreographer: if it is of course never even slightly believable that you’re watching a group of actual cats, but there’s a real unity between the leaner, edgier look of the performers and the leaner, edgier choreo.
Nonetheless the first half, in particular, feels hindered by a lack of spectacle beyond the dancing, with Sami Fendall’s static set – which looks a bit like a crashed spaceship – and Jessica Hung Han Yun’s lighting patently better designed to be viewed after dark (which shouldn’t be a problem later in the run).
The cats are grungier and less cosy than their 1981 forbears
But moreover… it’s still just a series of cats singing silly songs! If it hadn’t been so enormously successful the first time out you could view it as a whimsical period curio. But during the more disposable numbers - ‘The Old Gumbie Cat’, ‘Bustopher Jones’ - I just felt perplexed that this show has resonated so wholeheartedly with so many people for so long. Nobody in their right mind should care about Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat!
Of course that has to be balanced against the fact that a lot of it is really quite good, especially in the second half when it’s dark and the set and lights look loads better. The ethereal, glittery ‘Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer’ section is lovely; stage vet Gary Wilmot is a treat as the doleful but slyly egotistical Gus the Theatre Cat; Dianté Lodge’s monstrous Macavity is a brimstone-whiffing treat and Jet Yau’s Magical Mister Mestophiles has both one of the best songs and a slightly gratuitous but extremely fun set of B-boy dance moves. And then there’s Grizabella, played on press night by understudy Taziva-Faye Katsande (normally it’s Rachael Wooding). The ‘story’ about the faded Glamour Cat being rejected from feline society but then offered redemption via the, er, hazily defined resurrection ritual the little beasties have gathered to perform remains baffling. But there is absolutely no denying that climactic number ‘Memory’ is a banger for the ages – the belted out final chorus is sublime and a deserved moment in the spotlight for Katsande.
Really it’s a very decent production of a tuneful and idiosyncratic musical that just happens to have sold a kerchillion tickets back in the day. But McOnie doesn’t really try to find new depth or meaning to Cats and ultimately this feels in the shadow of its previous incarnation. Refinement, not reinvention. The shame is there’s a reportedly excellent immersive Broadway revival entitled Cats: The Jellicle Ball whose odds of coming here are presumably vastly diminished by the OAT production. Still, there’s a danger of overthinking things - after the horrors of the film, this is a night of eccentric but undemanding fun.
Cats is at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre until Sep 19. Buy tickets here.
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