What's with the hatred of Cats? - Page 3

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 1/22/16 at 8:46pm

It's not one number. Grizabella spends the entire show seeking forgiveness and readmittance into the tribe and the other cats continually reject her.  Eliot describes her as frequenting Tottenham Court Road which for Eliot was still a prostitute district. This may be one of the reasons they no longer accept her. It may seem absurd but Eliot spends every poem assigning human characteristics to each cat.

 

The plot, however vague, is based on an unpublished poem in which a man asks "What's a Jellicle cat?" This verse is sung near the top of the show and sets up the evening which sets out to explain why Jellicle cats are unique. Not unlike A Chorus Line, each cat comes forward to "audition" for the opprtunity to travel to the Heaviside Layer to be reborn. The elements of acceptance and rebirth are present throughout the entire show.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 1/22/16 at 9:29pm

henrikegerman said: "Shortly after the show opened in New York, I remember watching Randy Newman - of all people - telling some tv host - Tom Snyder I think it was - how much he hated it.   And adding that the only thing he enjoyed was the experiential absurdity of paying a whopping and up to that point unparalleled $45 top ticket price to see it.   $45 dollars!   If we can even imagine that by today's standards.

"

 

henrik, sometime shortly after CATS opened, I was talking to directory assistance and asked for the number of Theatre Now. The operator departed from script--Horrors!--and asked angrily, "Do you work in the theater?" "Sometimes," I replied. "What the hell is up with CATS? Everybody said it's so great, but I've never seen a worse show in my life!"

 

The conversation we are having here then continued between the operator and I.

 

***

 

As for using the word "hate" with regards to a show, I've admitted CATS wasn't as painful to witness as I expected. But I hated the show because of what it taught civilians, especially tourists, to expect at the theater and went a long way toward dictating what was available on Broadway for the next 10 to 20 years.

 

ROZA wasn't perfect, but I would sit through it 10 times in 10 days rather than see CATS again. Ditto for GRIND. Were their failures entirely the fault of CATS? Probably not. But the rise of overblown poperettas didn't help prepare audiences for smaller musicals with more serious aims.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 1/22/16 at 9:43pm

RaiseYouUp said: "'...I think Cats shows ALW at his best.'

 

I disagree. I think Cats is probably ALW at his worst. Evita is ALW at his best.

 

"

The highlighted first line above is RaiseYouUp's quote of EricMontreal. Eric's remark shows exactly why many of us hate CATS. (In all seriousness, I agree that ALW's work with Tim Rice was much more appealing.

 

But to put the hatred in context, at least among some of us who remember the 1980s, one has to consider how CATS arrived on these shores as "The Next Great Musical". Had it been a modest off-Broadway show, it would have been hated less AND closed in two weeks. IMO, obviously, since we can never know for sure.

Updated On: 1/22/16 at 09:43 PM

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/22/16 at 9:55pm

My favorite is Gommerguzzle, the swallowing Cat.  I love Cats and look forward to seeing it many times during this and every subsequent revival.  (I hope there are seven more in my lifetime!)

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 1/22/16 at 10:11pm

Treasure Island Media presents CATS!

[South Fl Marc]

Posted: 1/22/16 at 10:18pm

^ Now that's funny.

[Scripps2]

Posted: 1/23/16 at 6:04am

  Evic said: "Plus it was based on poems written by a Brit."

Who was American born and didn't change his citizenship until his late thirties. 

 

So what was your point?

 

[StephieElise]

Posted: 1/23/16 at 8:54am

OP are you a fellow Australian? If so, I can definitely understand where you're coming from. My younger sister was obsessed with the London video and I really didn't understand the appeal. It didn't seem to have any story and a lot of the numbers seemed to drag. My mother felt the same about the original Australian production in the 80s. We were both then pleasantly surprised when we loved this new revival. The whole show seems a lot tighter and it seems to flow better. I even loved the new Rum Tum Tugger! The story actually makes sense in this production - as another poster said, it's similar to ACL with the individual cats 'auditioning' to be 'the chosen one'. The high amount of audience interaction (particularly in the front row) is also really fun! Hopefully the Broadway revival will be just as good. 

[wonkit]

Posted: 1/23/16 at 4:31pm

I saw the original "Cats" relatively early in its original run on Broadway. Tickets were hard to come by and expensive (for the time). It was rather a status symbol at first to say you had seen it.

I, for one, hated it. The music showed no understanding of the original poems, and more money was spent on modifying the theater than any other production item. The music was boring and irritating (especially "Jellicle Cats". The cleverness of dancers moving like felines wore off in about 5 minutes. The flying tire effect seemed pointless and risible. I did buy a wonderful teeshirt. My first serious merch adventure at a Broadway show.

No interest in seeing it. Don't know if it can be freshened up enough to play for long.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/23/16 at 5:21pm

Millions of us enjoy this show and even joined fan clubs for our favorite cats.  I still have my Mitzytwister Forever! membership card here somewhere.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 1/23/16 at 8:23pm

EricMontreal22 said: "when I was doing a theatre research paper involving reviews from the late 80s I came across, time and time again, Frank Rich (a critic I mostly admire) praising now completely forgotten, and often mediocre shows because they were American and even writing things like "Thank God for a good old American musical!"  I think the backlash killed Aspects of Love (not a great show, but a much better show than the American reviews would show) and just seem off point.

 

 

 

"

Yes, but Frank Rich was the turning point and it took a decade of his championing SUNDAY IN THE PARK and other American shows before the trend in favor of British poperettas began to abate. Remember that before Rich we had a decade or two of Clive Barnes praising everything British and insisting that Broadway had to embrace rock 'n' roll. (Yes, Barnes liked COMPANY. Everybody has an off day.)

***

Eric, I'm now responding to a different post of yours, but in terms of why the music for CATS is so bad, ALW took a slight volume of whimsical poetry for children and scored it as if he were writing AIDA. The bombast and over-production completely overwhelms Eliot. It's no accident that the most successful song in the show does not use an Eliot lyric.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 1/23/16 at 8:34pm

Updated On: 1/23/16 at 08:34 PM

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 1/23/16 at 9:49pm

"Memory" is still heavily based on Eliot's Rhapsody on a Windy Night, especially the first one sung at the end of act one. Memory, moonlight, street lamps and gutters... it's all there in the poem. The first verse of the "Grizabella the Glamour Cat" song is also lifted from Rhapsody on a Windy Night.

[evic]

Posted: 1/24/16 at 8:26am

My point of it being so British is that most people don't know the difference between the Russel Hotel and a Motel 6 or the difference between Tottingham Court and the Supreme Court....many references to England that no one has a clue about if they don't live there.  And the names of those pussies are soooooo twee.

[broadwaybabywannabe2]

Posted: 1/24/16 at 8:57am

not that it matters but when i saw CATS in 1982 i hated it from the very beginning...the music is noise for the most part, and with so many look alike creatures on stage the focus was hard to gather...sorry cat lovers this person loves DOGS!...tee hee

[Susanswerphone]

Posted: 1/24/16 at 9:23am

I get to the end of the thread and there is an ad that says, "Never scoop cat litter again".

Purrrfect!

[bryan2]

Posted: 1/27/16 at 12:57pm

Having seen it early in the original run...I got to see the amazing talents of Terrance Mann Cynthia Onrubia Ken Ard ..the amazing Timothy Scott and sit and hear Betty Buckley sing MEMORY like you would never hear it sung again...Was it a great show .no..but amazing performances and visually stunning..I think the music is very underrated...and the talent that came out of that show and kept people working for so many years speaks for itself

 

[Roscoe]

Posted: 1/27/16 at 1:44pm

It's a cute idea for a show, setting those poems to music.  There's some engaging stuff in it, I guess, but whatever fun it has gets engulfed in the show's colossal self-importance, it takes itself very very seriously indeed.  And Betty Buckley's shrill shrieking of "Memory" will never leave my list of Most Horrific Broadway Moments.

 

And some of the songs go out of their way to avoid what the poems are actually about.  Turning Macavity The Mystery Cat into a demented comic-book SUPER VILLAIN as opposed to Eliot's own riff on Sherlock Holmes' Professor Moriarty was pretty tasteless.

Updated On: 1/27/16 at 01:44 PM

[shomeika]

Posted: 1/27/16 at 1:49pm

I thought it was dreadfully boring. I fell asleep, and eventually walked out. Its the only time I've done that @ a Broadway show.  It wasn't bad, just not my cup of tea. 

[Scripps2]

Posted: 1/27/16 at 2:26pm

evic said: "My point of it being so British is that..."

 

So what you're saying is that those who hate Cats do so because it is British?

[evic]

Posted: 1/27/16 at 3:41pm

Of course not.....they hate it because it is a boring, awfully choreographed show that relies on spectacle over content.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 1/27/16 at 8:39pm

My point about Brits was that the show was hyped as something the Brits loved, the implication being that we ignorant Yanks "had to" bow to the superior taste across the pond. The question in this thread was "Why is CATS hated?" For those of us who were around in 1982, that was one reason, IMO.

 

It had nothing to do with hating British productions in general. The birthplace of Eliot is entirely beside the point.

[devonian.t]

Posted: 1/28/16 at 5:31am

That's not how I remember 1981- 82.

Right up to the first performance everyone thought ALW & co were out of their minds.  The show opened and BACK THEN seemed like the most innovative, happening show since, perhaps 'Hair'.  Of course there was a wave of hype, but it was generated on both sides of the Atlantic.  Broadway was as desperate for this hit show to arrive as Really Useful and Cameron Mackintosh were keen to transfer it!

Just like with 'Les Mis' a few years later, 'Cats' then became as others have recalled, the "prestige ticket" (as ridiculed in 'American Psycho'- and we see that phenomenon today with 'Hamilton': guys showing they have enormous penises because they could afford to pay $500 for a ticket.

Ultimately, there seem to be 2 strands of hatred for 'Cats':

a) those people who just hate the content and think it's dumb and reductive (I agree)

b) those who object to a perceived cultural imperialism with the Brits throwing their weight around in America's home-grown theatre form.  This, I think is a little unfair, since there were plenty of Americans who were very keen and happy to take a slice of the action from this license to print money.

The trend for British pop operas declined- as all things do- because the novelty wore off and people wanted something new, (principally the jukebox musical- so there was a real improvement!)

(I currently dislike 'Cats' for the the way ALW once again shows disregard for other artists, junking Gillian Lynne in a highly disrespectful manner, as documented in 'The Stage' this week.) 

[MrsSallyAdams]

Posted: 1/28/16 at 9:31am

Broadway shows had been heavily marketed before Cats (read anything about David Merrick), but they frequently emphasized stars. The Cameron Mackintosh model emphasized logos which were plastered on everything.

As I understand it, everyone was told Cats existed but little more. The marketing did not tell you that Cats was an experimental dance piece based on a book of poems.  Mackintosh's other Broadway hits (Les Mis., Phantom, Miss Saigon) tell familiar stories. Cats did not and folks who went in expecting one walked away feeling cheated. 

[KathyNYC2]

Posted: 1/28/16 at 10:29am

I am much more of a cat person than a dog person but while I can't say I HATE Cats the musical, I can say it's just not my cup of tea, I was completely bored with it and have absolutely no interest in seeing another version..... ever.

And there are very few shows that I will say that with - I usually can find something to enjoy in even the least well received shows. But just NO to this one.