Playwright: music, lyrics and book by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. At: Theo Ubique at the No Exit Café, 6970 N. Glenwood. Phone: 773-347-1109; $30-$35 (add $20 for dinner package). Runs through: Jan. 2, 2011
There ought to be a sign at the entrance to the No Exit café warning playgoers, “Do not pat the cats.” When these tactile beasties, garbed in spandex fur, stretch lazily and wave their, ahem, tails within inches of our faces, or pounce on our tables to regard us with unwavering feline stares, the impulse to invite a friendly kitty into our laps for a doze is almost irresistible. (Ailurophobes whose dread extends even to anthropomorphically costumed human beings can also view the, um, caterwauls from a safe distance.)
But this very proximity is what distinguishes the Theo Ubique experience from the extravaganzas we have come to associate with the Andrew Lloyd Webber canon. Big-budget scenic effects were harmless enough in the 1980s, but when was the last time you could understand every word of Webber’s lyrics, let alone see each character-defining twitch of a whisker and hear the squeak of shoe-on-floor when a dancer executes those spectacular multiple-fouetté spins?
The slate for this revue inventories the types of cats prevalent in English society circa 1937: the “gumby” who loafs all day and carouses all night. Railroad ratcatchers and theatrical supernumeraries. Faithless toms, always on the roam. Velvet-pawed “cat-burglers” blamed for household infractions ranging from spilled milk to missing silverware. And a once-pampered pet, now abandoned to the streets. By way of a plot, there is the framing device of an annual ceremony observed by the “jellicle cats” (baby-talk for “dear little cats”) in which one of their number is selected to ascend to that great catnip garden in the sky.
The cast assembled by director/choreographer Brenda Didier is mostly young, with energetic flexibility befitting their ages. Rebecca Pink taps up a storm as the nocturnal Gumby, Maggie Portman lends a Kurt Weill slink to the ballad of the elusive “Macavity,” while Josh Huppert’s LED-clad Mr. Mistoffelees charms with exuberant pas de chats. There’s more than just catfooting around, however: Matt McNabb’s delicate lyric tenor invokes a beatific aura for Old Deuteronomy, Brian-Alwyn Newland’s rich baritone renders the operatic romance of Pirate Growltiger a show-stopper and Sydney Charles’ poignant rendition of “Memory” transforms the familiar cabaret-warble into a prayer for all mortal creatures, great and small, confronting the ends of their ninth lives.