Drew McOnie’s new production of Cats at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre is a sexed-up, high-octane staging that stirs and transfixes audiences throughout.
The 2019 film adaptation did considerable damage to the musical’s reputation, deepening a creeping sense that perhaps Cats is simply too strange for modern audiences.
Yet if Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Starlight Express, in which grown adults play toy trains, can return successfully, there is no reason Cats cannot do the same.
McOnie serves as both director and choreographer, and his out-of-this-world choreography creates startling images of the animals moving together as a pack.
The ensemble cast flop atop one another, hiss and flex in ways that feel genuinely naturalistic, far looser than the pirouetting performances seen in the film adaptation.
Sami Fendall’s pleasingly minimalistic moon-shaped set provides an elegant backdrop, drawing the eye constantly toward the prowling, intuitive creatures crossing the stage.
The story follows a pack of cats gathering for The Jellicle Ball, where Old Deuteronomy will choose one animal to be reborn into a higher life.
Jaydon Vijn delivers a fantastic performance as the Harry Styles-coded Rum Tum Tugger, bringing charisma and energy that makes the character thoroughly compelling to watch.
Understudy Taziva-Faye Katsande performs the principal role of Grizabella on press night, bringing a naiveness to the vulnerable older cat that proves genuinely moving.
Her delivery of the famous track Memory is superb, though she is perhaps too young to fully convey the wisdom and nostalgia that truly defines the character of Grizabella.
A similar issue arises with Old Deuteronomy, played by Melanie La Barrie, as the character in T S Eliot’s original poems is written as considerably older than 51.
This production feels thoroughly youthful, which may not entirely align with the strange, abstract wisdom that underpins Eliot’s original source poetry.
Performed beneath two moons, one a gorgeous set piece at the top of the stage provoking glances up toward the actual open sky above, the show retains its magic.
Despite its loose narrative direction and the majority of its runtime devoted to introducing individual felines, this Cats earns a confident four stars.
Cats is playing at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre until 19 September.