This is a stylish and joyous production from the Wellington Musical Theatre who have been presenting shows in Wellington for over 100 years with largely voluntary and passionate casts and crews under the direction of professionals.

I’ll come clean right from the outset: never seen CATS before; I know, I know, how could I have missed one of the iconic theatre productions of the last century? Sorry but it has never been on my radar – more of that later.

It opened in the West End of London in 1981 (27 years ago!) and has been to Broadway, Budapest, Vienna, Tokoyo, Sydney, Toronto, Hamburg, Mexico City, Amsterdam, Buenos Aires, Madrid, Warsaw, Prague, Moscow, Dutch National Theatre, Brisbane, Hobart, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, Hobart, Macu, Guangshou, Beijing, Wuhan, Chengdu, Dongguan, Shenzhen, Israel, Lahti, Quebec City, British Columbia, Melbourne and Wellington. WHEW! Talk about a big global phenomenon/miaou!

With costumes and set (this is a franchise we are talking about here) direct from a season in Melbourne, the Wellington show fills the stage of the Opera House to bursting point. The Vector Orchestra sounds great and throughout the show I really enjoy the balance and tone of this group of musicians under the assured musical direction of Michael Nicholas Williams.

Having nothing to compare it to I am assuming that the director (Grant Meese) and choreographer (Leigh Evans) have free rein in terms of staging.

With a cast of all shapes and sizes and various talents they do a brilliant job honouring the mega demands of the show both choreographically and in terms of the singing and staging. There are moments when the chorus really soars in full voice although at times it is difficult to catch the lyrics. (They are largely nonsensical anyway!)

There is a grand melding of text, image and dance/movement in this anthropomorphic ode to the pussycat by a passionate and dedicated company who dance and sing their hearts out. It is a treat to see performers really enjoying themselves onstage; the audience responds accordingly.

There is a LOT of choreography in this show and Evans has done a damn fine job – she has such a musical sympathy in her movement and a really developed sense of space and dynamic; hours and hours of work involved. Throughout, the performers must convince us of their cattiness with their choice of gesture and movement – some are more successful that others. 

Special mention must go to the lighting design by J. Howard Anderson – some of the effects are magical.

It seems unfair to pick out particular performers in such a strong ensemble piece – but some of my favourite moments were: Victoria the White Cat’s solo in Act 1 (Skye Hay); the Rum Tum Tugger rock star tomcat character and song (Waylon Edwards); Grizabella, the aging Glamour Cat, poignantly played by Joanne Hodgson, and of course that famous song ‘Memory’ where I almost had goose-bumps as the dry ice swirled in purple light; the whole Jellicle Ball sequence which is an extraordinary dance number. In Act II Lloyd Scott really stole my heart as Gus the Theatre Cat and he established a warm, tender and funny relationship with the audience. The whole Growltiger’s Last Stand sequence (Kent Robinson) was visually stunning, Mr Mistoffelees (Mikhael Plain) was particularly nimble and the entrance of Macavity (Andrew Miller) really surprising.

As Grizabella blasts off into the fly-tower in a kind of smoking jet, I lean across to my companion and whisper, "What were they on when they wrote this?" Without detracting from the efforts of this company, this is opiate for the masses; meaningless, visually pleasing with some gorgeous melodies that tug at the emotion strings for no apparent reason other than that’s what melodies can do.

I know now why it has been off my radar: I don’t quite understand why it has had such a protracted life; definitely not Lloyd Webbers best work. As one commentator said "The more you’ve seen Jesus Christ Superstar the more you feel a kind of admiration, the more you’ve seen CATS, the less you feel this admiration".

Perhaps CATS needs to stay in the last century?

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In 1981 Sheridan Morley reviewing the first Cats prophesied that it would doubtless have more than nine lives in more than nine cities. As we know this anthropomorphic dance-through mega-revusical, which has earned in excess of three billion dollars world-wide at the box-office, has had hundreds of lives in hundreds of cities and will have many many more.

But why? There’s no plot, it has only one hit song (recorded by more than 150 singers), and it has a climax in which the bedraggled Grizabella, who doesn’t even rate a poem in T.S Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, ascends into a moggy heaven called Heaviside Layer, which we are not meant to laugh at, though for me the scene severely rattles my faith in musical theatre.

The secret to its success is surely what Wellington Musical Theatre and director Grant Meese and choreographer Leigh Evans and musical director Michael Nicholas Williams have created: a superb team of singers and dancers whose sleek professionalism cannot be faulted.

Apart from some strange moments such as a weirdly dressed chorus line brandishing yellow loo brushes and a lot of the spandex dressed cats wearing wigs that seemed more in tune with the 18th century or Carnaby Street than any feline head, and Grizabella heading off somewhere beyond the Russell Hotel on a platform that turns into a rocket, the staging of the songs and dances is thrilling.

Benjamin Priest’s nimble Skimbleshanks is a spirited creation as he and the cast travel on the railway. Chris Green’s Old Deuteronomy, suitably dressed as a hairy Old Testament prophet, is in fine voice particularly in the finale, while Waylon Edwards has an arresting, dynamic stage presence as the rock star The Rum Tum Tugger.

The old trouper Lloyd Scott plays with delicacy, pathos and gentle humour the old trouper Gus the theatre cat for whom the theatre is not what it was when he appeared with Irving and Tree. He also plays the would-be man about town, Mr. Bustopher Jones without overdoing the toff. And Joanne Hodgson powers her way through Memory with aplomb and taking the house with her.

I thought that this newfangled production of Cats, which has been set on London rooftops rather than a rubbish dump because of some ridiculous contractual reason, would be like taking New York out of Guys and Dolls, but I was wrong.

It works because in the end it is the exuberance, skill, athleticism, and singing of the entire cast, the control of the Vector Wellington Orchestra, the inventiveness of the choreographer, and the spectacular lighting (J. Howard Anderson) that matter, not the individual moment. There were cheers, or as Gus would say, cat calls at the end. They were deserved.

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