Review: At the Paramount Theatre in Aurora, ‘Cats' becomes a chaotic kitty circus
Faux kitties perform all manner of tricks from juggling to acrobatics. Instead of her Grizabella standing there and belting out 'Memory,' one of the great power ballads of all time, Emily Rohm finds herself lifted up into the air on a trapeze, just as she has to emit the most dramatically powerful note. Grizabella is hard enough, I found myself thinking, even as Rohm was then transported out across the house on an extensive, 'Mary Poppins'-like track that seemed to extend halfway to Naperville.
If you are doing 'Cats,' I'm all for delivering to the people lots of spectacle. That is part of the point of 'Cats,' an early conceptual musical based on the poetry of T.S. Eliot and concerned with which cat within the lively Jellicle tribe gets to enjoy eternal life via the celestial 'heaviside layer' (a phrase coined by Eliot but turned by Lloyd Webber into a kajillion dollars over the last 44 years). I've no problem with the theming: 'Cats' is pliant, as we all discovered in New York with the brilliant staging of 'Cats: The Jellicle Ball.' Even by Paramount's high standards, this is an eye-popping show, replete with elaborate rigging, grand illusions and all manner of circus activities put together by director Trent Stork, choreographer Kasey Alfonso and circus specialist Sylvia Hernandez-DiStasi. And it's stocked with acting talent, too: Aside from Rohm, a fine vocalist, behind the whiskers lurk the highly skilled likes of Lorenzo Rush Jr., Tiffany Topol and Allison Sill.
But with all due respect to the amount of work and risk here (and especially the makeup from Katie Cordts) and the undeniable quality of much of the singing, I can't say I much enjoyed this particular production. It is the victim of its own excesses and, as a result, that all-important emotional connection between audience member and warbling kitty gets squelched. Time after time, you get the feeling that nobody fully trusted the material, despite its proven ability to charm at least four different generations by now. There's so much stage business going on that it ends up feeling intrusive, and you feel throughout the show that everything is so busy and prescribed and surely difficult to perform that the show never gets a chance to breathe.
There was only one moment all night when I really felt something, and that came courtesy of Gene Weygandt, gamely playing the aging Gus, the theater cat, which is a pretty good description of Weygandt himself. His big number is a poignant song taken directly from the Eliot poem about that time in a cat's life when paws begin to shake, the coat turns shabby and mice and rats no longer cower in fear. But just as Weygandt, a fine actor, was invoking the horrors of mortality, every eye in the theater left his face and rose to another cat up on a trapeze. Hardly necessary and, frankly, it was emblematic of many such moments where taking a few things away would great have improved what matters most in the theater.
In fairness, the show (which was first produced quite differently by the Paramount in 2014) received a warm ovation on the night I attended and, as ever at this important anchor of downtown Aurora, tickets prices are very affordable. But I found the piece too chilly, especially when you think this is a family attraction. Sure, life is full of tricks. But 'Cats,' and cats, have survived not by assaulting the senses but by building long-term relationships.
Review: 'Cats' (2.5 stars)
When: Through June 15
Where: Paramount Theatre, 23 E. Galena Blvd., Aurora
Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Tickets: $28-$85 at 630-896-6666 and paramountaurora.com
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