Jellicles Can and Jellicles Do: What I Liked This Week #31
On melodrama (copywright: Lorde, 2017), camp, and reimaginings
Hello dear sweet Substack, I’m sorry it’s been so long. Sometimes you need a summer hiatus. There’s no time/space for needless yapping, let’s dive in.
Theater: Cats: The Jellicle Ball
Jellicles really can and Jellicles really do in PAC’s production of Cats: The Jellicle Ball.
I’m not alone when I say that I’ve been giggling about this production since it was announced a year ago. It’s just that “immersive ballroom Cats the musical, performed at the newly constructed Perelman Performing Arts Center, just steps away from the World Trade Center memorial,” is not a sentence I would have dreamed up. It’s too bizarre, too out there. After seeing the show last weekend, I wouldn’t say I’m wrong. It is a little bit bizarre. But more importantly, it’s kind of genius.
The original musical, created by Andrew Lloyd Webber, follows a group of cats (played by humans in horrifying fur suits) who gather under the full moon to decide which one will ascend to the Heaviside Layer (whatever the f*ck that is). To me, historically, Cats is a dumb, unsettling musical that is somewhat incomprehensible and definitely nightmare inducing. To those who have had the pleasure of watching James Corden and Taylor Swift in Tom Hooper’s film version, it’s probably ten times worse. But this is not your Taylor Swift’s Cats.
Directors Zhalion Levingston and Bill Rauch strip the show of its catsuits, turns Andrew Lloyd Webber’s perpetual melodrama into camp, and take TS Elliot’s poetry and reshapes it into a story with a plot. In doing so, they create an unforgettable spectacle. And if you know me, you know I love a spectacle.
The production pays homage to from New York’s drag ballroom scene of the 80s, replacing the show’s iconic junkyard with a more iconic runway, and creating short “the category is” vignettes out of each song. The ‘cats’ are still competing for the chance to go to the Heaviside Layer, but the meaning has slightly changed. There’s still an implication of rebirth, but it is accompanied by fame and adoration and freedom1. And somehow, the changes work. The reinvented Cats is sexy and electric, sumptuous and decadent, and I don’t know how anyone could watch it any other way.
Thrilled as I was to get to see the show of the summer, it did take me about 20 minutes to figure out what was going on, to reconcile the cat-inspired nonsense lyrics with the visual storytelling taking place. I think the blame for this is divided evenly between Mr. Webber and I; ALW wrote a musical whose plot is entirely vibe based, and I am not well versed enough in either Cats or in ballroom culture. And frankly, this production is also just overstimulating. Much like entering a dark room, you have to give your eyes (and brain) a moment to adjust.
But even if I hadn’t been able to eventually lock in to what was happening, even if my media literacy skills weren’t as stellar as they are, even if I had not studied the semiotics of theater, I think I still would have had the best time (it didn’t hurt that they gave us free prosecco and M&Ms at our ‘cabaret table’ seating). Aesthetically and dramaturgically, Cats: the Jellicle Ball is a stunning, thoughtful production. Everything from the casting (ft. a mix of Broadway divas, drag performers, and dancers of all genders and body types) to the dozens and dozens of vibrant costumes, to the ecstatic, gasp-inducing choreography felt intentional. Reading about this production a year ago, I think it was easy to assume that it would come across as insensitive or offensive to drag performers and culture, but I was so moved by the amount of care and love put into the production. Even when Rum Tum Tugger ripped off his pants (hot!), or Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat came out dressed in full sexy MTA regalia, there was still a level of sincerity to the production that I loved. I will never like the song “Memory,” and I wasn’t openly weeping for the final 30 minutes like the man next to me2, but I was touched all the same.
At a time when non-profit theaters are floundering, and everything on Broadway feels uninspired or stunt casting reliant, it is so special to see a show at a new venue not just succeed, but thrive (the show has extended twice). When I asked my boss what she thought of the show, she said “extraordinary,” and I think that word is only right to describe it.
Other shows I loved this summer: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (wonderfully fun, read Zoë’s great review), Mary Jane (Rachel McAdams!). Other shows I liked: Home (great acting), Six Characters (confusing, interesting). And finally, shows with good parts and melodramatic parts: Titanic (eh??), Water For Elephants (incredible gymnastics), and two other shows3.
TV: My Lady Jane, The Olympics
My two favorite movies are Pride and Prejudice and The Princess Bride, and therefore I am the target audience for My Lady Jane. While the show doesn’t quite get to P&P/PB levels of excellence, it does feel like it was made in a very fun lab just for me.
Almost as fun as watching My Lady Jane? Describing it. My Lady Jane is a revisionist history take on the life and death of Lady Jane Grey. It’s also a sizzling, chemistry heavy enemies to lovers romance. Oh and it’s a fantasy series where certain people, can turn into animals. In other words, there’s a lot going on. But much like Cats, My Lady Jane shockingly works.
A quick Elizabethan era history lesson: Following the death of King Edward, Jane Grey became the Queen of England at only 16 years old. Jane’s rule was doomed from the start, as Bloody Princess Mary4 sought the throne for herself. Shortly after Jane’s ascension, Mary had poor Jane beheaded. It inspired this very tragic painting.
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Now let’s play what if! What if Edward didn’t die, but went into hiding instead? What we replaced the power struggle between Catholics and Protestants with one between magical and non-magical people? What if Jane’s very dashing, very roguish husband Guilford was an aforementioned magical person with no control over his powers, who animorphed into a horse whenever the sun was in the sky? Sounds like a hit to me!
My Lady Jane stands out most because of its delightfully rich characters. Initially, Jane feels a little bit like a standard not-like-other-girls feminist. She doesn’t need a husband, she’s a scientist, and she knows how to use a sword. It’s all the right ingredients for a lightly annoying girlboss of a character. But both the writers and actress Emily Bader seem to know this, and are satisfyingly tongue in cheek about it. In fact, one of my favorite things about Jane is that she is unabashedly haughty, bossy and better-than-thou. While these are annoying5 traits, they (1) are also what make her a good ruler and (2) are playfully made fun of by the show’s narrator. It also made the moments where she was vulnerable all the more compelling.
Jane’s sometimes-horse husband is perhaps less well-rounded, but Edward Bluemel plays the tortured-rake-turned-tortured-wife-guy trope so well that you don’t mind. The rest of the ensemble is comedic and charming too - particular standouts are Anna Chancellor as Jane’s horrible, horny mother, and Mamma Mia’s Dominic Cooper as the pathetically wicked Lord Seymour.
My Lady Jane is certainly weird (remember: the reverse were-horse), but it’s refreshing, campy, romantic, and grounded by its characters. It has a once in a blue moon kind of magic, though evidently Am*zon Pr*me disagrees, as they’ve already said no to a second season. This is unfortunate, but I very much enjoyed the 1 season we got, and I look forward to it joining the ranks of Pride and Prejudice and The Princess Bride as one of my go-to rewatches.
I love the Olympics. Every 2 years, the spirit of patriotism enters my body for a short 3 week period, and I happily watch America’s finest athletes compete at the highest level. Women’s gymnastics is of course my favorite sport, because I am a theater girl who always wished she had the ability to do a flip, but I also enjoy soccer, track, and plenty of other things because I am multifaceted individual and have diverse interests!
Other TV enjoyed this summer: Bridgerton (s3). Other TV tolerated/inconsistently enjoyed: Emily in Paris (s4, pt 1), The Umbrella Academy (s4). Reality TV I’m invested in: The Bachelorette.
Books: James, among other things
The theme of this newsletter is evidently reimaginings, because best book I read this summer was James, by Percival Everett. This is a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim, Huck’s travel partner and an escaped slave. And it is a brilliant meditation on race, friendship, and language as a tool for protection and power. Jim (who renames himself James) is a striking protagonist; he’s insightful and judicial, he’s impulsive and vindictive, and he cares deeply about his family, Huck, and the friends he makes along his journey. James is a character study, an adventure novel, and as my mom described it a story about maintaining your personhood. While I haven’t read Everett’s Erasure, I did see American Fiction (excellent!), and this feels like a really perfect companion piece to it.
Romances I’ve loved: A Novel Love Story (Ashley Poston), The Rom-Commers (Katherine Center), How to End a Love Story (Yulin Kuang). Plays I’ve liked this literal week: The Mountaintop (Katori Hall), The Baltimore Waltz (Paula Vogel). Good forays into other genres: I Hope This Finds You Well (Natalie Sue), Warrior Girl Unearthed (Angeline Boulley).
That’s all!
The other things I’ve been liking this week are kiwis. Get yourself to the store and buy one!
I won’t spoil how the show ends, but there’s some stunning dramaturgical lighting and sound design going on when the “Jellicle Choice,” (what does this mean? lol I just can’t with you, ALW, you silly goose!) “ascends.”
In his defense, I think he had 4 drinks. It was a Sunday matinee. Hope he’s doing okay.
Politely abstaining from saying more.
BTW this is not Mary Queen of Scots! They are different Marys! One could say the name Mary was the ‘Emily’ of the 1540s.
Watching Jane be a control freak, I thought to myself “Wow, she’s so me!” instead of “Wow, she’s irritating,” which personally, I think speaks volumes.