CATS

At the Teatro to watch a show about Cats. Cats are everywhere, fur naturalistic, fantastic make-up, the performers stayed in role the whole time. They were cats, inquisitive, sensual and alluring without meaning to. 

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats is built on T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, a collection of poems that already resist conventional narrative. Webber doesn’t “adapt” them into a linear story—he creates a ritual. What you’re watching is less a plot-driven musical and more a ceremonial gathering: the Jellicle Ball.

Once a year, the Jellicle cats assemble to present themselves—body, memory, instinct, desire—so that one may be chosen to ascend to the Heaviside Layer and be reborn. That’s it. No villain, no quest, no romance arc. The drama is existential.

And that’s where cats become not just a choice, but the only possible choice.

Why cats? Why not people?

Cats exist in a perfect symbolic middle-ground:

They live with humans but are never owned by us in spirit.

They are domestic but untamed.

They are sensual without apology.

They are ancient, ritualistic, observant, and indifferent to morality.

In mythology and psychology, cats are liminal creatures—they cross thresholds. Think:

Egypt: cats as divine guardians (Bastet)

Folklore: witches’ familiars

Jungian symbolism: intuition, shadow, feminine power, erotic mystery

Humans on stage are burdened with social codes. Cats are not. By making the performers cats, Webber removes:

shame

realism

everyday morality

What’s left is pure archetype expressed through the body.

The archetypes on stage

Each Jellicle cat is not a “character” in the naturalistic sense—they are aspects of being:

Grizabella – the fallen goddess / the exiled erotic self / memory and regret

Rum Tum Tugger – the trickster libido, chaos, sex appeal incarnate

Old Deuteronomy – the wise patriarch, time itself embodied

Macavity – the shadow archetype, criminal instinct

Munkustrap – the storyteller, the chorus, order and observation

They are not meant to “change.” They present themselves. This is a parade of identities asking a cosmic question: Who deserves transcendence?

They stayed in rule as cats.

That discipline is everything.

The performers are not acting “sexy humans pretending to be cats.” They are humans suppressing their humanity to allow animal instinct to dominate. The choreography demands:

constant low center of gravity

prowling awareness

elastic spines

hands that behave like paws

eyes that never stop scanning

This creates a physical language that is:

predatory

playful

curious

unapologetically sensual

Cats don’t flirt the way humans do. 

They display. Stretching. Arching. Grooming. Staring. Retreating. Approaching again.

Sex appeal emerges not because it’s advertised—but because it’s inevitable.

Cats are erotic without intention. That’s the key difference. There’s no performance of desire for an audience—there’s just embodied confidence, physical intelligence, and instinctual presence.

The performers:

take up space without apology

move as if watched but unconcerned

exist in their bodies with ease and ownership

That reads as sexy because it taps into something ancient: desire before language.

It’s closer to:

dance

ritual

courtship

animal magnetism

Not titillation. Not seduction. Vitality.

Cats doesn’t want you to “believe” in cats singing. It wants you to submit to a different logic—dream logic, myth logic, body logic.

the set is oversized (you’re inside a cat’s world)

time feels suspended

the fourth wall dissolves

eye contact with the audience is frequent and unsettling

You’re not watching animals. You’re being observed by them.

They were nimble.

They were inquisitive.

They were agile.

And yes… they were sexy.

Because Cats is not about cats.

It’s about what humans look like when they remember they are animals first 🐾

Music: Andrew Lloyd Webber

Based on “Old Possum’s Book of Practical cats by TS Eliot

Associate director and choreography: Chrissie Cartwright

Music supervisor: Peter McCarthy

Assistant Choreographer and Director: Matt Krzan

Musical director: Louis Zurnamer

Resident director: Duane Alexander

Sound designer: David Creasly

Lighting designer: Howard Eaton

Gimbie cat choreographer: Bill Deamer

Orchestations by: David Cullen and Andrew Lloyd Webber

Cast

Cindy-Ann Abrahams

King B

Phoebe Charles 

Tatum Coleman

Noa Duckitt

Cassiel Eatock-Winnik

Ryan Flynn

Micheal Fullard

Che-Jean Jupp

Dylan Janse van Rensburg 

Congratulations Duane Alexander and the whole team for a great show and a deserved standing. 

📸: SamSays