I think the thing with Cats is the same thing as with many classic musicals – they really don’t age well, or at least they don’t age and then jump to another medium well. Cats was a hit in the 80s, when the appetite for weird was stronger than it is today (okay, at least that kind of weird). And the theatre version of Cats is very immersive, with performers in the audience for some parts. The version I saw, you got to go onstage at intermission, talk to the actor playing Old Deuteronomy, and admire the set.
Cats the movie loses all of that before the first frame is projected. And the theatre version is old enough a lot of the target audience wasn’t even born yet when it was a theatre hit.
It’s a real head-scratcher as to why it ever got greenlit.
People like my dear partner who never saw it on stage, but really wanted to.
But, even she has had to concede from the reviews and the trailers that we won’t be seeing it . (And Taylor Swift. A person whom I’m ambivalent to, but my partner just really doesn’t like… Who knew?)
i saw it thursday night. i generally liked it, too, but it DEFINITELY feels like running down a hill – there’s a lot packed into it. it’s not a perfect movie, but what [star wars] movie is. there’s definitely problems, but there were many things i found stunning, epic, or moving, so overall i’m good with it. i will say this: it felt less like an ending to everything for me than The Last Jedi did, which is really an odd feeling to have.
The review in The Stranger seemed to nail it: Cats is supposed to be a hot mess, it always was a hot mess, it always will be. It’s cats, singing, and something about cat heaven. I’m looking forward to it, with all the render time they want to re-issue it with until six months from now when we all will forget about it forever.
Finished Watchmen yesterday. Felt emotionally drained at the end of it, to the point that I didn’t really dig the last episode until the end. More please, Miz Regina.
Well, don’t hold anything back now; tell us how you really feel about it! I’m almost afraid to ask about your thoughts on Sondheim…
*lolz
J/k, I have no dog in any of the ‘theater nerd’ fights; personally, I don’t really dig show tunes or most big musical productions in general, with a few rare exceptions.
Moscow is the origin of the original libel of the Protocols. Henry Ford was just some late backing. Given how incomparably badly the Russian aristocracy handled the 1905 rebellion, the war with Germany, and the communist alliance with the the underworld, you’d think the American Nazis like Ford and little figures like Fred Trump would think to skip the mistakes of the aristos. Not just compounding them.
The blackface is from La Bayadère, not the Nutcracker.
However, the Nutcracker has not escaped criticism.
Now, The Nutcracker is one of the most popular ballets in the world; the story is as much a part of the Christmas canon as Rudolph or Frosty, and many dancers credit The Nutcracker with inspiring their own careers. Nearly every regional company in this country has its own version, many of them based on Balanchine (who drew on Marius Petipa’s original nineteenth-century choreography). Companies rely on The Nutcracker to sustain them for the rest of the year; at NYCB, Nutcracker generates about 40 percent of the annual revenue.
It also traffics in blatant and offensive stereotypes. Dressed in harem pants and a straw hat, eyes painted to look slanted, the white man playing “Chinese Tea” jumps out of a box and bows; two white women, wearing chopsticks in their black wigs, dance with their index fingers pointed in the air. In a dance conceived as “something for the fathers,” a woman portraying “Arabian coffee” slinks around the stage in a belly shirt, bells attached to her ankles. (Choreographers in different genres continue to reinterpret it; in Austin McCormick’s Nutcracker Rouge , “Arabian” is a pole dance.) It’s a beloved Christmas tradition—but parts of The Nutcracker haven’t aged well.