THE JELLICLE BALL: How One Critic’s View of CATS Was Transformed

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How CATS: THE JELLICLE BALL at Broadway’s Broadhurst Theatre transformed one lifelong Cats skeptic into a believer.

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I am a person who, depending on your perspective, has been either blessed or cursed with the burden of being highly opinionated. Though I often struggle to find the blessing in my role as loud, frequently wrong ( sometimes right ) pontificator, over the years I've come to accept my occasional boorishness, learning to revel in the pleasant surprises that come along with realizing I don’t actually know everything, rather than marinating in shame.

Over the years, I have loudly dismissed and later retracted countless pop culture diatribes, and as a young musical theatre fan, one of my favorite targets were the works of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber . Now, I am glad to report that have since revised this opinion as his genius has revealed itself to me over the years and can now call myself an enthusiastic fan.

(I was permitted to ask him a question at the Tonys last year and I literally have not shut up about it since, up to and including right this very moment. It was like meeting a king! I digress.)

That being said, I had never really made my peace with Cats .

For many Millennials of a certain age, reared on Rent and Spring Awakening and Wicked , the Cats brand always felt, in a word: dusty. A bizarre but treasured relic that lived in a museum called the Winter Garden Theatre, now and forever. As its 80s synths and ubiquitous legwarmers began to show their age, this wildly successful production had morphed into a pitiable and accepted cultural punchline. The widely-derided film adaptation that came later did not help matters.

Over the years, I made several failed attempts to explore the cast recording and PBS film, usually tapping out somewhere around, “Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer” before the repetition of its storytelling wore me down.

People tried to disabuse me of my anti- Cats rhetoric over the years. Allison, my Cats -loving coworker whose attendance count long ago hit the double digits, did her level best.

“Alexa, Cats is GOOD,” she insisted over Slack during the last Broadway revival at the Neil Simon — an assertion I promptly ignored.

And yet, despite nearly 37 years as an avowed Cats detractor, when CATS: The Jellicle Ball was announced, my ears pricked up like a CGI humanoid cat person. The genius of merging drag balls with that of the Jellicle variety was immediately obvious. So when the acclaimed production arrived on Broadway, I swallowed decades of hateration and RSVP’d, if for no other reason than to find out, once and for all, what the hell a jellicle cat even is.

I expected camp. I expected drag. I expected to finally understand if it was the drug boom of the 80s that catapulted such a strange concept into decades-long success. What I did not expect was to leave the theatre deeply moved, openly weeping about aging, memory, community, and the inevitability of transformation.

In the weeks leading up to that performance, death had become a spectre in my world. Family members and people I loved had started to disappear from the world with alarming regularity, and the vague existential dread that hums beneath adulthood had sharpened into a deep panic around the fragility of life and my own impending foray into the aging process.

My friend Doug, who accompanied me that day, had also recently lost his mother. As we stood outside the theatre, he wept describing his grief. Lost for any words that might ease his burden, I looked to the marquee.

"I was raised in church," I explained, "but I can't say I ever got a thing out of it. If there's anywhere on Earth I've ever felt God, it's here. Maybe there will be something in here for both of us. In any case, I hear it's fun." I offered, sincerely hoping I was right.

We made our way to our seats. It was only after a Broadway bartender poured me a truly heroic and gloriously irresponsible serving of white wine in a 16 oz. souvenir cup, that I realized I would be imbibing on an empty stomach that day. "Buy the ticket, take the ride," I thought as I sipped. It is a ball, after all.

Before the performance even began, I found myself swept up on a wave of joy as the best-dressed audience on Broadway, a mix of theatre kids, downtown divas, monied white people, and even a few drag ball legends took their seats. The familiar clack of hand fans rang out as Lord Webber's wheedling, synthy overture filled the space.

When Andrew Lloyd Webber first presented the concept of Cats to director Hal Prince , Prince reportedly launched into an elaborate interpretation of the material, likening its themes to class structure and the rule of the British aristocracy. Webber let him continue for a while before finally replying, famously and flatly: “Hal, it’s about cats.” As it turns out, both men were wrong: Cats is about drag queens. We just didn’t know it yet.

As the catwalk populated with jellicles of all shapes, sizes, colors, and creeds singing of all that they "can" and "would" do in the next two and a half hours, the mission of this production became apparent. This was not a soulless costume party or some commercial co-opting of queer optics, but a full-hearted celebration. A flag finally, rightfully, and joyfully planted in the name of queerness, Blackness, age, size, and otherness in the soil of Broadway, brought to us by artists who had perfected the art of ballroom— much like the jellicles themselves— in the shadows.

Immediately, I was struck at how seamlessly the text formed itself to this new telling, every beat of the show finding a comfortable nook to fill out its new skin. The result feels almost cosmically aligned in its mission.

Though I can’t speak to the efficacy of the show’s original production (which seemed to work just fine for delighted audiences the world over), this is not a Cats that succeeds in spite of its supposedly divisive material, but one that reveals the genius that was there all along. Placed in the hands of human characters, the high poetry and emotional urgency of Cats suddenly snap into focus, transforming what once seemed bizarre into something deeply relatable.

As Doug later put it, "You just don't care as much when it's a bunch of cats running around up there."

As the first act wore on, I could feel the wine getting to work just in time for the full thrust of the show's emotional arc. Andrew Lloyd Webber 's score twisted around my mind, its yearning intervals and recitative creating an etheral, hypnotic effect, illuminating the impressive breadth of its musical landscape. I felt a lump rise in my throat as the soaring voices heralded the arrival of, "Old Deutoronomy," their commitment religious in its fervor.

As Broadway legend Andre De Shields materialized before us, adorned and adored, he was ushered in by an astounding chorus performing what I now know to be one of Lord Webber's most glorious themes.

This is where, dear reader, your faithful correspondent discovered that Cats , in the words of fictional Clueless icon, Cher Horowitz, is "way existential."

In one of the only upsides to holding fast to strong negative opinions, Cats exploration of age and evolution had heretofore eluded me until the very moment I seemed to need it.

It turned out that, in addition to my grief, I had entered the theatre weary from existing in an algorithmic hell in which none of us can ever seem perfect enough. In a world where the computer in our pants serves an endless stream of fitness content, GLP-1 ads, shiny veneers, injectors, and facial yoga, the quiet anxiety of remaining impossibly youthful has become its own kind of mental prison.

In a culture that demands allegiance to youth and beauty, we are made to fear our natural evolution, undertaking increasingly elaborate measures to erase it. In the process, we lose our reverence for elders and the wisdom that lives in their advanced forms. The Jellicle Ball , however, knows no such allegiance.

When 'Tempress' Chastity Moore steps forth as Grizabella, a permanent grimace painted across her face, we come understand the Glamour Cat’s exile to be largely self-imposed. Her sorrow palpable, her bitterness a translucent armor for self-loathing, she stalks the stage lamenting her state and eschewing every invitation to return to the fold. This Grizabella has fully bought into the notion that her beauty and best days are permanently behind her. Unwilling to take her place among the elders, she consigns herself to a life in the shadows.

In Act Two, we meet Gus (née Asparagus), the Theatre Cat. As portrayed by ballroom legend Junior LaBeija , we are offered another perspective on aging entirely. In one of the production’s finest examples of how upper-crust Brits and drag queens apparently speak the same language, the sickeningly glamourous Gus regales an eager crew of kittens with tales of his years on the stage. He recounts his history with fondness, pride, and a royal swagger he need not even rise from his throne to display. They listen with reverence. And so do we.

There is no age, body type, no preference, presentation, artistry, or demographic that is not up for celebration at The Jellicle Ball . All it asks is that you dress it up and wear it with pride.

Get your life in the spotlight or live in the shadow of shame. The choice is yours.

Pair all of this with an energy unlike anything else you'll find on Broadway, choreography and costume design destined for higher honors than I can bestow, dreamlike stage imagery, chord changes that made my heart lurch, vocal arrangements that worked like a drug, and approximately 13 ounces of Sauvignon Blanc, and reader, you are destined to understand what came next.

Chastity returned to the stage. The Jellicle Choice. Fully restored to her former glory, prepared to head into an uknown future, she began to sing one of the most famous songs in God's creation. A song I have heard an unquantifiable number of times in my jellicle life. A melody familiar to even those with a passing knowledge of musical theatre. A song you can hear in your head, right now, without me even mentioning the name.

As she sang, I was overcome. Catharsis took hold. Tears welled in my eyes as all I had carried into the theatre with me broke like a wave, the beauty of her voice a balm for things I knew I felt and even a few things I didn't, its undulating ache swathing me like a quilt.

It was only once I was awash in lyrics so profound that I realized I had never bothered to actually learn them. I'd had the experience, but missed the meaning. At last swept up in a moment that had so enamored millions before me, I finally had the right kind of ears to hear her fatalistic warning.

As the brilliant transwoman standing just feet above me launched into the song's famous crescendo, reaching a hand to the audience, I watched like a bystander as MY OWN HAND appeared in front of my face, involuntarily reaching back, tears rolling down my cheeks.

"Alexa, Cats is GOOD."

I finally understood.

She finished. A new day had begun. A well-deserved ovation took several moments to conclude, and I looked up at my also visibly emotional friend in the dark, hoping it had done some good for him, as well.

As the stunning ensemble vogued the show to its fruition, I clapped along with the rest of the crowd, feeling more cleansed than tipsy and high on pure delight.

I walked Doug to the subway, happily chattering beside him about my VERY NEW FAVORITE MUSICAL CATS. As he bid me farewell and descended the steps, I took off toward Titanique , where I planned to meet my mother for my second bill of the day.

As I walked, very much out of nowhere, the

_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/A-New-Day-THE-JELLICLE-BALL-And-The-Redemption-Of-A-CATS-Hater-20260531)._