Playbill: You better purr! Cats: The Jellicle Ball, the reimagined revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber's long-running musical, newly set in the underground world of Ballroom, has pulled back the curtain on what the show will look like when it comes to Broadway later this year. The musical is coming to the Broadhurst Theatre beginning March 18, ahead of an April 7 opening night.
4 comments:
This production sounds so cool! I absolutely love immersive theatre, and it sounds like this production of Cats will have some immersive elements! I don’t really know much about Cats, but I would love to see this production. I did watch the movie a few years ago, and was underwhelmed. I am a big cat person in general, so I really enjoyed looking at all of the costumes and makeup, but that was about it. Jennifer Hudson was, of course, a highlight though. I loved Hadestown, so I am a big fan of Andre De Shields. I would love to see him live! I am interested to see how the costumes and makeup for this production embrace the ballroom theme, while staying true to the original. The lighting design has the opportunity to be really cool with the ballroom choreography and music style. Cody Renard Richard is the stage manager of all stage managers, so I know that this production will be of a very high caliber.
I don’t know if this is a popular opinion but I actually really love the musical Cats. And I am reallyyy excited for this. The shows that they listed of the recent productions that took risks doing immersive not working out was interesting to me because I really loved Cabaret and Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet. Yes, one random college student's opinion on those shows doesn’t matter to broadway at all because I understand those stats are on profit not reviews but it still makes me really excited to hopefully see this musical. I am interested to see how this kind of immersive runway style seating will play out when the show opens, I kind of wish they would have fully committed to being immersive like full thrust or in the round but I think this will be interesting too. I feel like runway seating can be difficult to incorporate fun choreography though so I guess we will see.
I saw Cats in 2017 on Broadway, and since then, I've honestly been a little bit obsessed with it. When I saw information about the ballroom version (Cats: The Jellicle Ball), I was shocked. As an avid fan of the ballroom scene, I thought it made perfect sense. And, this immersive theatre movement is something I love - I think a proscenium is kind of. boring configuration. I saw Natasha, Pierre, and The Great Comet in an immersive theatre in San Diego, as it is meant to be, but also Cabaret in the same theatre. It bums me out that people do not really enjoy the immersive theatre (which can be seen by the way they did so poorly). The staging for the new Cats looks SO COOL. I wonder how much the on-stage seats are going to be in a mainstage broadway theatre? They were the same price at the small stage I saw Comet and Cabaret at. I really hope this does well, I think that immersive theatre and the ballroom scene are things that need to be shared with everyone!
Jess G ^^
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