theater review Cats: The Jellicle Ball Is the Real Thing
The production makes a thrilling number of choices to update and revise and comment on the bizarre musical entity borne of a posh Brit’s love of T.S. Eliot’s poems for children, but it retains the basic load-bearing elements of the original show. There are cats — portrayed air-quotes style by actors as ballroom performers. They are gathering for their ball, and they sing all the songs you know. And yet, in placing new context and bodies inside the suit of ’80s excess, The Jellicle Ball reinvents it. Arriving on Broadway, The Jellicle Ball proves itself to be more than a fluke or a flight of fancy. It’s spectacular.
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