my (not) brief opinions on the regents park prod.
Now, i intentionally went into this show with very little research and i also had a friend with me who had never seen cats (but was familiar with the music).
the lighting was incredible; the outdoor venue itself was pretty cool in general but the lighting really made it feel special
i enjoyed the way the "touching" theme was made more obvious through the choreo. They did this thing where they all lay together or otherwise touch in a big line, and it makes it feel really nice when grizz is finally included in a big group hug
skimbleshanks. by far my favorite from this show. first of all, the actor has a moustache, which i personally really enjoyed. He also definitely had the best solo number outfit: conductor's suit with gold sparkly tassles.
i didnt understand the theming... like at all. like they have this whole wild animal theme with the costumes which is fine, but like it doesn't have anything at all to do with the rest of the theming from what i could tell? During solo numbers they wear more exciting outfits and i frankly liked most these, but i had no idea how that connected to literally anything else. And then they had really fun human hair designs that were low-key ruined by the cheap looking ear/hat things. The stage itself was basically completely bare (which, fair enough, there wasn't a ton of space). And then they used pretty normal "garbage" style props, which is even more confusing because that doesnt make me think "wild animals" at all. Long story short, it felt kind of slap-dash in the way that it was themed and i wished they had either leaned more in the "human clothes" direction or "wild animal" direction
they did growltiger's last stand, which i was not expecting at all. i was thrilled to hear it and the pirate costumes/ griddlebones costumes were great. the only reason its in the "???" category is because they didn't really do anything about the whole siamese cat thing, despite the fact that they seem to be trying to push how they're correcting usual problems with representation and such in cats
old deuteronomy's kidnapping is not obvious at all. macavity and deut kind of just... run off the stage together with no obvious sign of struggle. I actually wouldn't have put this in "bad", except for the fact that my friend didn't understand the ENTIRE misto plot because he didnt even realise old deut had been kidnapped, which i feel like is a very big issue for what would have been a very easy fix
this show seems to hate victoria. FIrst off, there were 4 white cats!!! I couldn't tell who victoria was until her "solo" (we'll get to that) and even then she was difficult to spot in the ensemble. my friend never figured out which actor she was, despite knowing about the white cat beforehand. This wasnt helped by the fact that she had a very dramatic outfit change going into the second act. Second of all, there was no white cat solo. She had some kind of duet thing with pouncival instead (who is her love interest in this show for some reason)? but at that point nobody knew who either of them were so nobody cared, and in general it felt kind of awkward. I get that this show had more of a dance style choreo to it, so the typical ballet solo would be out of place, but in general it just felt like she was robbed.
Speaking of robbed, Mr Mistoffelees. I was trying to figure out the entire show which cat was supposed to be misto... which is because he just straight up isn't in the show at all until his song. So when he shows up he's literally just some random guy wearing a crazy ugly metal belt/shoulder thing. They have this whole thing at the beginning where pouncival can't dance right and in general doesn't really seem to be able to follow along with everyone else, which I think could have been a very clever way to introduce Misto instead. I actually didn't have too much of a problem with the breakdance solo for misto, I was kind of expecting it since the whole show was definitely more "dance" than "ballet". The dancer was clearly extremely talented and I actually enjoyed that the conjuring turn was a really long head-spin!
TLDR: i'm happy I went to see it, it was fun, I think the actors were excellent and the music sounded absolutely fantastic. The outdoor setting was really interesting, I just felt that production really let down the potential of the location/ cast with the lack of any sensible theming.
titsay
gummygunk
origamiaround
dailybridgerton
ellievsbear
