Calling a spade a spade
Those darn trickster cats, Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer (source: IMDB)
I saw Cats the other day.
Not the highly critiqued CGI-filled version of 2019, but the classic 1998 British movie.
Instead of hearing beautifully sculpted prose (or, you know, passably written journalistic sentences) in my head, every silence for days has been filled with:
Oh! Well, I never! Was there ever/A cat so clever as magical Mr. Mistoffelees!
(Spoiler: unless another cat has brought back a kidnapped feline through magical prowess, there probably has never ever been a cat so clever.)
As a die-hard cat lover, dancer, and as big a fan of a good spectacle as anyone, I loved the show, spandex catsuits and rope-tails-on-elastic-bands and all.
Naturally, as someone who spent a little too much time grade-grubbing in high school, I spent a lot of the movie analyzing the plot.
“Delightful,” I thought, appreciating yet another cat joke mixed with a touching homage to show-biz stereotypes.
Warning: For others who made it to 2020 without seeing the musical, minor spoilers follow. But if you like famously difficult choreography, catchy tunes, or cat puns, what I’m about to say won’t affect your enjoyment at all.
In my mind, the poor roughed-up Grizabella, the former ‘Glamour Cat,’ was obviously a metaphor for a washed-up starlet who no longer gets any love when she’s too old.
The impish Rumpleteaser and Mungojerry were classic slapstick side characters just there for comedic relief – and they even made a reference to their own “quick changes.”
Pitiful old Gus (Asparagus) the theater cat seemed to confirm my assumption when he lamented that “the theatre is certainly not what it was.”
“Do you think they’re cats, because they’re sleek and like attention?” I asked my partner, paws-deep in analysis.
“Oh, I just thought they were cats,” he said.
He was right.
Turns out, they really are just cats.
The actors even sleek around on stage on all fours. Dancers constantly throw one leg in the air like a cat about to clean itself. And characters brag about knocking Ming vases off tables, begging for scraps, and hunting mice.
Most interpretations of Cats seem to agree that, aside from a few pokes at showbiz, it really is just a two-hour excuse to enjoy song, dance and felines.
Cats creator Andrew Lloyd Weber also explained, somewhat famously, that it’s “just about cats.”
Sometimes obvious metaphors are really side jokes at best.
Sometimes a musical about cats is just about cats.
Either way, I’ll be singing feline show tunes all week.
(And to the neighbors who maybe didn’t want to hear a heart-wrenching rendition of “Memory” at 10 p.m., you can blame Rumpleteazer. Or was it Mungojerrie? You can never tell with those two.)