\n<\/p>\n
Things seemed to change when the video came out.<\/p>\n
At the end of May, the Perelman Arts Center posted a clip<\/a> on social media of \u201cJellicle Cats,\u201d the catchy, effervescent opening number from the musical \u201cCats.\u201d It showed a group of queer performers catwalking in a rehearsal room before breaking apart to freely dance and vogue. One singer wore a cap winkingly topped with feline ears; another stared down the camera and twirled her ponytail with declarative swagger.<\/p>\n This was the first real glimpse of a new, ballroom-inspired revival of \u201cCats,\u201d<\/a> running through July 28 at PAC NYC, as the Perelman Center in Manhattan is known. Since it was announced nearly a year earlier, the show had been a subject of skepticism and mocking humor: \u201cCats\u201d was ridiculous enough, but ballroom<\/em>? Hardly a mention of the production went by without a snicker.<\/p>\n Then the \u201cJellicle Cats\u201d clip went viral, and jaws dropped. Celebrities chimed in, with the comedian Ziwe saying, \u201cOk go off\u201d and the filmmaker Justin Simien simply writing, \u201cAYEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.\u201d On TikTok, one person commented, \u201cdo I\u2026\u2026do I suddenly want to see Cats?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For over four decades, \u201cCats\u201d has been something of a cultural punching bag. Andrew Lloyd Webber\u2019s adaptation of poetry by T.S. Eliot, unfolding as a dance-heavy, revue-like show about cats gathering in a junkyard for their annual Jellicle Ball, has been seen as strange at best, and kitsch at worst. Its earworms have driven theater critics mad; its costumes of unitards and leg warmers are just as impossible to dislodge from your memory. Tom Hooper\u2019s film adaptation<\/a>, from late 2019, flopped disastrously, and was jokingly referred to as a dark turning point that ushered in the pandemic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But, in a moment of stage directors reconsidering<\/a>, and often reimagining, Andrew Lloyd Webber\u2019s musicals, such as a stark \u201cSunset Boulevard\u201d transferring to Broadway<\/a> from London this fall, perhaps it is also the time for \u201cCats\u201d to shake off its pop culture clich\u00e9s and say something new.<\/p>\n That, at least, is the goal of the PAC NYC production, called \u201cCats: The Jellicle Ball,\u201d an immersive revival that is free of felines and unfolds as a ballroom competition. As a concept, it maps onto the musical with surprising ease and heart.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThink about \u2018Cats\u2019 being street characters in a junkyard and ballroom being these historically marginalized people,\u201d said Zhailon Levingston, the show\u2019s co-director. \u201cIn ballroom, you have a centering of legacy and chosen family, the way cats have a tribe. Both take what\u2019s given to them, and turn it into something beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Levingston first saw \u201cCats\u201d as a child; he basically forced his mother to rent the 1998 video release at Blockbuster. According to family lore, he watched the entire show inches from the television screen, without getting up once. That\u2019s when it was clear, he said, that \u201cmy mom knew that something was going on, that this young person is not the same as the other kids.\u201d<\/p>\n Fast-forward to the pandemic, when Levingston was at home with his roommate, playfully wondering what \u201cCats\u201d would be like if the characters were \u201ccats\u201d in the older, slangy sense. Around that time, Bill Rauch, the artistic director of PAC NYC, happened to be trying to work out a queer take on the musical.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n