CATS

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CATS

At the Teatro to watch a show about Cats. Cats are everywhere, fur naturalistic, fantastic make-up, the performers stayed in role the whole time. They were cats, inquisitive, sensual and alluring without meaning to. 

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats is built on T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, a collection of poems that already resist conventional narrative. Webber doesn’t “adapt” them into a linear story—he creates a ritual. What you’re watching is less a plot-driven musical and more a ceremonial gathering: the Jellicle Ball.

Once a year, the Jellicle cats assemble to present themselves—body, memory, instinct, desire—so that one may be chosen to ascend to the Heaviside Layer and be reborn. That’s it. No villain, no quest, no romance arc. The drama is existential.

And that’s where cats become not just a choice, but the only possible choice.


Why cats? Why not people?

Cats exist in a perfect symbolic middle-ground:
They live with humans but are never owned by us in spirit.
They are domestic but untamed.
They are sensual without apology.
They are ancient, ritualistic, observant, and indifferent to morality.


In mythology and psychology, cats are liminal creatures—they cross thresholds. Think:
Egypt: cats as divine guardians (Bastet)
Folklore: witches’ familiars

Jungian symbolism: intuition, shadow, feminine power, erotic mystery

Humans on stage are burdened with social codes. Cats are not. By making the performers cats, Webber removes:
shame
realism
everyday morality
What’s left is pure archetype expressed through the body.

The archetypes on stage
Each Jellicle cat is not a “character” in the naturalistic sense—they are aspects of being:
Grizabella – the fallen goddess / the exiled erotic self / memory and regret
Rum Tum Tugger – the trickster libido, chaos, sex appeal incarnate
Old Deuteronomy – the wise patriarch, time itself embodied
Macavity – the shadow archetype, criminal instinct
Munkustrap – the storyteller, the chorus, order and observation

They are not meant to “change.” They present themselves. This is a parade of identities asking a cosmic question: Who deserves transcendence?


They stayed in rule as cats.

That discipline is everything.

The performers are not acting “sexy humans pretending to be cats.” They are humans suppressing their humanity to allow animal instinct to dominate. The choreography demands:
constant low center of gravity
prowling awareness
elastic spines
hands that behave like paws
eyes that never stop scanning

This creates a physical language that is:
predatory
playful
curious
unapologetically sensual
Cats don’t flirt the way humans do. 

They display. Stretching. Arching. Grooming. Staring. Retreating. Approaching again.
Sex appeal emerges not because it’s advertised—but because it’s inevitable.

Cats are erotic without intention. That’s the key difference. There’s no performance of desire for an audience—there’s just embodied confidence, physical intelligence, and instinctual presence.

The performers:
take up space without apology
move as if watched but unconcerned
exist in their bodies with ease and ownership
That reads as sexy because it taps into something ancient: desire before language.

It’s closer to:
dance
ritual
courtship
animal magnetism
Not titillation. Not seduction. Vitality.


Cats doesn’t want you to “believe” in cats singing. It wants you to submit to a different logic—dream logic, myth logic, body logic.

the set is oversized (you’re inside a cat’s world)
time feels suspended
the fourth wall dissolves
eye contact with the audience is frequent and unsettling
You’re not watching animals. You’re being observed by them.

They were nimble.
They were inquisitive.
They were agile.
And yes… they were sexy.

Because Cats is not about cats.
It’s about what humans look like when they remember they are animals first 🐾


Music: Andrew Lloyd Webber
Based on "Old Possum's Book of Practical cats by TS Eliot

Associate director and choreography: Chrissie Cartwright
Music supervisor: Peter McCarthy

Assistant Choreographer and Director: Matt Krzan
Musical director: Louis Zurnamer
Resident director: Duane Alexander

Sound designer: David Creasly
Lighting designer: Howard Eaton
Gimbie cat choreographer: Bill Deamer

Orchestations by: David Cullen and Andrew Lloyd Webber


Cast
Cindy-Ann Abrahams
King B
Phoebe Charles 
Tatum Coleman
Noa Duckitt
Cassiel Eatock-Winnik
Ryan Flynn
Micheal Fullard
Che-Jean Jupp
Dylan Janse van Rensburg 

Congratulations Duane Alexander and the whole team for a great show and a deserved standing. 


📸: SamSays 

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