Why do people hate Cats- Page 2

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 8/15/06 at 3:03pm

It succeeded mostly due to being a non-offensive family show and the production really embraced the kid market (face-painting the little cherubs before the show, letting them go up on the stage and hang out with Old Deuteronomy at intermission, etc.....). They marketed it heavily to families and between that and word-of-mouth it could have run forever.

Also, it was a great show for foreign tourists who weren't totally comfortable with English. The show has the same impact whether you fully grasp what the heck those annoying cats are singing about or not. If you don't, you can still sit back and enjoy the dancing and spectacle.

[Christoph]

Posted: 8/15/06 at 3:23pm

While I can't say I hated it, I am definitely not a fan of it either. Although I thought some of the performers were good, I could not stand the plotless structure of the show and the fact that there were no ostensible central characters to hold your interest. I don't need much of a plot, but a little would have helped. I found Act I, in particular, excruciating, although I felt Act II picked up considerably with Growltiger's Last Stand (a number criminally missing on the video of the show), Macavity and the climax. Additionally, there is literally only so much that I can take at a time of watching dancers (no matter how talented) leap around in tights and cat make-up trying to act feline. Also, if I had heard those same bars for the Jellicle song played one more time, I think I would have vomited.

[jv92]

Posted: 8/15/06 at 3:52pm

I don't think that it's as awful as Phantom of the Opera. I don't think Cats is good though. Why don't I like it? Well, I don't care for the animal itself. However, that's not important. Lloyd Webber's music is bland. They don't gel with the poems. The poems are great, but not as songs, just as poems. The show had no plot. Yes, there have been several plotless musicals like Assassins and Company, but there was no concept. Why were the cats gathering together? Perhaps Lloyd Webber and company wanted the have the audience use their imagination and make up their own plot, but I'd much rather have a plot given to me and make up my own idea of a set. That's the other thing. The production was much too overblown.
It also ran for a great deal of time. It shouldn't have. That also annoys me.
People flocked to it because, as Margo said, it was safe. There wasn't anything crass or bawdy in the show. The freakish looking felines entertained the kiddies through the whole damned thing (even intermission, as Margo said.) You didn't need to have a knowledge of the time or place.
It's a prime example of how flash makes everything look great. Its worked with Lion King. Its worked with Wicked. To a lesser extent, its worked with Pippin.

Updated On: 8/15/06 at 03:52 PM

[JohnBoy2]

Posted: 8/15/06 at 3:56pm

I hate it, because, I don't like the music, and I never could stand grown-ups playing animals or children; and, it's just plain, boring to me. I'm amazed at its success.

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 8/15/06 at 4:11pm

But, Elliot (a first rate dramatist himself) never intended for them to ever be used in a dramatic context.

This is not true. Elliot himself actually had the idea first to use the poems to construct an "evening". Eliot had drawn up sketches for the purpose of using and incorporating the poems into an event, and I've always been rather impressed as opposed to finding it ludicrous that Webber, Nunn and Lynn were able to construct an evening of musical theatre, after Eliot's death, with the ban that the Eliot estate put on the inclusion of original material. They were therefor forced to create a "plot" using the unpublished poems of Grizabella, Eliot's "Rhapsody on a Windy Night" and fragments based on two phrases:

"Jellicle cats come out tonight, Jellicle cats come one come all. The Jellicle moon is shining bright, Jellicles come to the Jellicle Ball".

and the unpublished idea of Eliot's that a cat would eventually travel "Up, Up, Up past the Russell Hotel. and "Up, Up, Up to the Heaviside Layer".

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 8/15/06 at 4:49pm

Whatever idea Eliot came up with after he'd written them, these individual pieces each stood on their own and were not intended initially to be the basis of a narrative theatre piece -- they were just poems for his grandkids. They are unrelated vignettes with no dramatic arc and in fact could be rearranged endlessly and have the same result. There have been many evenings of poetry that have been performed throughout the years (centuries in fact), but they are just that -- evenings of poetry, not dramatic works. And depending how these collections are put together and executed within a theatrical framework, they can either make for fascinating and highly enjoyable entertainments (such as GOREY STORIES or FOR COLORED GIRLS), or they can be tedious and monotonous. For me and many others over the age of 8, CATS fell into the latter category.

[jjoey076]

Posted: 8/15/06 at 7:44pm

I just saw Cats for the first time this weekend in a teen theater production, and I enjoyed it, but only for three of its songs and for the creative, talented actors in the cast. It has no story...the only artistic value in it is its half-baked songs but its superb choreography and creative and unique characters.
Updated On: 8/15/06 at 07:44 PM

[compaddict]

Posted: 8/15/06 at 7:57pm

I've never seen Cats, but back when the tour was here in... December 2001 (?) my English class was going to see it. Naturally, there was a huge ice storm the day before so the power was out, trees were down, and school was cancelled. So we didn't go. Being high school students in smalltown, usa, we weren't going to find out "Why do people hate Cats" -- we were going to find out "Why do people love Cats enough for there to be a musical about them"

[JasonM12480]

Posted: 8/15/06 at 9:19pm

Speaking as someone who just completed a very successful run of the show, and who's cousin was in the production on Broadway in 1989 - when the show is staged/envisioned with the right amount of heart, it can be an extremely emotional and spiritual journey for both the cast and the audience.

[Hawker]

Posted: 8/15/06 at 9:43pm

I actually enjoyed "Cats", particulalrly the theme of redemption and grace and thought ALW's melody for "Skimbleshanks" was absolute genius given the very sophisticater meter of the poem.

However, I soon learned that expressing these sentiments in certain circles--the thetrical cogniscenti--established me as someone who could not differentiate between genuine theater and the trite, vapid, over-staged spectacles that ALW has been associated with.

Now, however, when I am engaged in theater talk I put on my best Thurston Howell III voice, meatphorically drop my pants, and urinate on all things ALW as a natural segway to launch into a monologue about the profound genius of Sondheim with occassional references to Kurt Weil.

Then, when alone, I sit back, listen to "Aspects of Love", and pleasure myself to photos of Elaine Page.
Updated On: 8/15/06 at 09:43 PM

[4seasonsJB]

Posted: 8/15/06 at 10:02pm

it is so boring

[wonderfulwizard11]

Posted: 8/15/06 at 10:19pm

I enjoy Cats. Though the storyline is very thin. I think it is a fun musical, with some good music and good dancing. It is a fun show. I enjoy ALW's music, and I think the lyrics are really creative. I enjoy the show. I don't value it a high class piece of art, but I enjoy it.