Cats Theatre in Japan... Question

[COOOOLkid]

Posted: 4/12/07 at 4:37am

Has anybody seen Cats in Japan? If so, what exactly are the rotating seats? I've read it somewhere, but I just got curious.

It looks like it's THE best theatre for this musical.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 4/12/07 at 4:54am

I'd never heard of this before but being a huge Japanese pop culture nut found this picture : http://www.shiki.gr.jp/theatres/cats/index.html

Apparantly it's actually in a very non fancy neighbourhood due to cheap land prices

[Princeton78]

Posted: 4/12/07 at 7:45am

The London production of Cats always had rotating seats. When you entered the auditorium, the normal orchestra seats and mezzanine wrapped around 2/3 of the stage. Before the show started, you actually had the back of the stage facing you and about 8 rows of patrons were seated in what seemed to be the most awful seats in the house in that they were behind the stage. At the climax of the overture however, the entire stage and those 8 rows mad a 180 degree rotation so that those rows actually became the first 8 rows of the orchestra and now the stage was set for the performance. It was a wonderful sight and i'm sure pretty impressive for 1981.

[Justin D]

Posted: 4/12/07 at 8:38am

except for the time when the mechanism broke down and the stage hands had to crank the stage manually, needless to say they had to stop the overture, crank it into position (tool about half hour) and restart the show.

just some other random interesting info about london. there is a toilet bowl under the stage, it isnt hooked up or anything, just there for the guy to sit on that operates the star trap for the Rumpus cat (that star trap in itself is an undertaking, takes atleast 2 burly guys to get it to work).
and one poor grizabella with a drinking problem almost fell out of the heaviside layer one night, thanks to the guide wires, she didnt. And finally, london did not have a pirate ship for growltiger's scene which was most dissapointing to me, all they had was a shillouette of a pirate ship painted on the back wall (amond the moon and stars) in a dim, UV qlowing paint so in that scene you could slightly see it.

[Princeton78]

Posted: 4/12/07 at 9:58am

I thought the London production was beautiful in its own way. Yes, the Broadway production was more impressive visually, but the New London really is a white elephant of a theatre to begin with, and when I saw the London show (circa 1999), I was more dissapointed in the performances than in the production values. I'm so thrilled that I got to see it.

[suzycat]

Posted: 4/12/07 at 11:14am

It looks like this is the seating plan for Japan:
http://www.shiki.gr.jp/theatres/seating/cats_s.html

[Justin D]

Posted: 4/12/07 at 12:02pm

alot of theatres in Japan were specifically built for vasious shows, and in alot of instances, the Japanese productions try to be as close to the original as possible, so its not supprigsing they would try to build or reconvifure a theatre to be like the one in london.

I always regred not seeing cats in NYC, it was always one of those "i'll see that on my next trip" and honestly i didnt ever expect it to close.

Mind you i dont regret choosing Miss Saigon over cats one year since Miss Saigon on Broadwya was way better than when i saw it in london