What’s new, pussyCats?

Kimberley McGee

Tuesday, Sept. 7, 1999 | 10:59 a.m.

Cats

What: Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Cats."

Where: MGM Grand Theatre.

When: 8 p.m. today, Wednesday and Thursday; 9:30 p.m. Friday; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday.

Tickets: $50 today, Wednesday and Thursday; $55 and $65 Friday; $50 and $60 for Saturday matinee, $55 and $65 for evening performance; $50 and $60 for Sunday matinee and evening performances.

Information: Call 891-7777.

Ever wonder where your feline friend wanders off to every night?

She's been living on Broadway for nearly 20 years.

For anyone who hasn't seen the world-renowned play by Andrew Lloyd Webber based on the T.S. Eliot work "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats," the famed musical "Cats" arrives in the 1700-seat Grand Theatre at the MGM today through Sunday. This particular tour has played more than 5,000 shows.

Why have we held onto this pussycat play -- which debuted on Broadway in 1982 -- longer than "Les Miserables," "Oklahoma" or even "Fiddler on the Roof"? The American duo Rodgers & Hammerstein never had a run as long as English import Webber. What gives?

Myron Martin, director of the Performing Arts Center at UNLV, says it's just a good play that children can cut their teeth on as an introduction to the theater, and it plays well to the audience.

" 'Cats' has been remarkably successful around the world," Martin says.

Its arrival in Las Vegas, after a nearly 10-year absence, is an added bonus to the current trend of large-scale theater shows on the Strip.

"The success of 'Chicago' (at Mandalay Bay) has shown that Broadway can live on the Strip," Martin says. "It will be interesting to see how it all plays out, who will produce which shows and for how long."

And to see what shows will make it in Las Vegas as it continues to define itself as the Entertainment Capital of the World, tykes and all.

"Part of 'Chicago's' success is that it's a show that kind of fits the Las Vegas scene a bit," Martin says. "It's a little bit sexy but not overly so. It's a little on the edge but not so much that the average person from Iowa wouldn't enjoy it."

But Mandalay Bay was just the beginning as the new Paris Las Vegas plans to host the "Hunchback of Notre Dame" in January and "Rent" comes to the Las Vegas Hilton next month. Broadway isn't playing the convention center anymore.

"It's good to see homes -- plural -- for these things," Martin says.

"Hunchback" will not be forsaken in Las Vegas, he says, due to its popularity in the real City of Lights and its successful run in Canada. The "Hunchback" production is bypassing Broadway for its United States premiere in Las Vegas.

"Bypassing Broadway and opening the first English version here, that says a lot" Martin says.

The new casinos are helping to shape the cultural backdrop to Las Vegas.

"I'm encouraged that there is an art bent to some of the new philosophies," he says of the new building boom on the Strip.

But "Cats" has been panned by some of the best critics around the world, and is the brunt of many jokes regarding its simplicity and, well -- it's about cats after all. How interesting can it be for two decades?

"People poke fun at Madonna but she is hugely successful," Martin says. "Still, everyone on the planet has heard the ('Cats') song 'Memory.' You can't escape it."

Midnight, not a sound from the pavement, has the moon lost her memory ...

Yep, it's part of pop culture, the songs, the icon of cats' eyes on a black background.

Donna Lowre, artistic director for the Nevada Stage Company, hopes Las Vegas' luster for theater will rub off on locals who may get the hankering for community theater.

"They (locals) think a Broadway show is going to be better than local theater," Lowre says.

Theatergoers in Las Vegas have been fickle, clamoring for more culture but leaving the few local attempts with low attendance numbers.

But many New York stage dancers and Los Angeles-trained theater actors make their home in Las Vegas. Lowre has worked on film, television and the stage for more than 15 years in London, L.A. and New York and says that this much talent is easy to see locally for $15 to $20 a pop, compared to the $100 seats at the casinos' off-Broadway-by-3,000-miles shows.

Who knows, maybe there is a trickle-down effect. And now that the confines of Las Vegas culture have been exposed to the broadening Broadway beat, perhaps they will carry this into the community.

"We need to support local theater more," Lowre says.

"Cats" assistant hair stylist Patricia La Rocco agrees.

This is the second tour for La Rocco, who took a few years off to buy a condominium in Las Vegas and attend to roller-blading actors for the former "Starlight Express" at the Las Vegas Hilton, another Webber show.

"There is no support for theater in Vegas," she says. "If people like Steve Wynn would support it and it's something that the city wants to see, then the city will (support) it."

The Las Vegas resident of five years says she likes the changes the city is making to its showrooms. "I like that they are building more Broadway-type venues into the casinos," La Rocco says."It brings a different kind of entertainment into the city."

And the new locals in Las Vegas are people from larger towns who are used to theater, she says. "It's fun to have something different than what you've always had here," La Rocco says. "It compliments the city that you can have a lot of variety in Las Vegas, that it's open to newness."

But why "Cats"? After all these years, she says she still gets a thrill watching the physical feats of the actors on stage. Add to that the elaborate, but furry, costumes, and the songs. She never tires of watching the play and all that goes into its make-up, so to speak.

"People want to see it," she says. " 'Cats' is a family show, it gives a warming message of acceptance."

La Rocco arrives at the show about an hour and a half before it opens, redresses the wigs, cleans the make-up off, combs them out and sprays them down. During the show she is on the sidelines to make small repairs with double-stick tape and just "be ready for anything."

"You just don't know what's going to happen backstage, it runs like a machine," she says. "Everybody is in their own world -- the actors are warming up, wardrobe is doing their thing. Each person, each group, is responsible for their own show and they do it every night. It becomes mutual respect for each other."

And audiences all over the world seem to have mutual respect for the long-running show. La Rocco says that while touring Canada, the show received a very warm response after a long absence. Americans also cheered the return of the show to their hometowns. It seems people just can't get enough of those crazy "Cats."

"They love it," La Rocco says. "They've seen it, but they want to see it again."

The "Cats" are taught how to transform their human faces into feline features with make-up, but are responsible for applying the grease paint for the next, oh, 6,000 shows or so they may do if the success of "Cats" keeps up. But the make-up of an individual character may change as an actor grooves into the role.

"The make-up gets fine-tuned as the actor fine-tunes his place in the show," La Rocco says. "It's a process that keeps going, changing."

Paul Clausen plays Munkustrap, the narrator of the "Cats" for the human audience, a return to the same character he played on the first tour of "Cats" in 1987.

"There aren't too many shows where, 10 years later, you can do the same role," he says. "We had a great time when we did it the first time. It's one of those shows where you have a built-in audience."

It is, as the marketing slogan says, "Cats ... Now and Forever." The show recently surpassed the tour record of "Oklahoma," which only lasted on the road for 11 years.

As a performer, Clausen says he is more relaxed than when he first started the role 10 years ago in his mid 20s. "As you age as a performer, you get better, there is a comfortableness," he says. "In performing, you surrender more as you get older."

Clausen enjoys the half hour it takes to put on his make-up. "I can do it in 12 to 15 minutes if I have to, but it's really a meditative experience," he says. "You actually do transform when you are (putting on the make-up). You become the character."

Not only must the actors, well, act, they have to sing, dance and play to the audience as well as each other. "It's a very physical (show)," he says of the jumping actors in feline drag on stage.

The show originally opened in London in 1981 and was imported to Broadway to some harsh criticism to patriotic theater buffs.

"But its longevity has outlived the rumors," Clausen says. "There are snobs, certain people in New York who think 'Cats' was never a work of art," he says. "But the masses love it."

Sometimes, he says, when the show comes into a town, a critic may be gunning for "Cats."

"People who don't like it, 95 percent haven't seen it," Clausen says. "It's fashionable not to like something."

But the masses don't care.

"Mostly people love it," he says. "We get a standing ovation every night."

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