Of CATS & Duh...

We went for the Cats muscial yesterday. For all the publicity and after watching it, WF told me I must write a review of this musical in my blog.

I think it was the brand name of Andrew Lloyd Webber and the 'many years running in Broadway' that attracted so many people to watch this musical. It was a sold out last night.

I can only say, it was a total disappointment. And I wasn't the only one who felt it. During the recess, we overheard people commenting that it's slow or the songs sung weren't clear that they don't know what the characters are singing and worse, one lady called her friend in the washroom to say she fell asleep. In fact, WF fell asleep too during the second half.

You might ask,"That bad huh?". Well, I can say, it is a disappointment.

The plot was weak. There weren't so much of a storyline and most of the time, they're just introducing the various feline characters through singing. WF felt it was more of a dance and acrobatic show than a musical.

There were a lot of unneccessary scenes. Like towards the end of Part One, there was a total of 15 minutes of pure cat dancing and nothing else. Just need to ask, how much variation of dance can you do if you're a cat?

And the part on Growltiger's Last Stand. I find it totally meaningless and almost irrelevant. And the act was silly too.

The singing was bad... bad bad and just bad. Except for a few characters like The Rum Tum Tugger and Jellylorum, the rest of the casts' singing fell way short of expectation. Like I mentioned, most of the casts singing was so bad that a group of audience behind me commented that they couldn't catch what they're singing. I do not think its the accent or what because we can definitely understand what Rum Tum Tugger, Skimbelshanks and Jellylorum is singing when its their turn to sing.

If Ning had heard the two feline singing the 'Macavity' part she would've tell you its lousy. The two cats couldn't portray the evil-ness of Macavity through their singing. They sounded like rushing through. And the last part where they're supposed to 'meoooowww' the word 'Macavity', they did a half bucket job. They should've listen to how Sarah Brightman sing this song and they'll know why she's good.

There were so much hype about Delia Hannah and when she sang the song "Memory" we were so disappointed. Especially when she sang it again in Part Two. She was practically shouting towards the end and that woke up WF.

Ok, enough of negative comments. Here are some positive ones. The choreography is good. The dancers can portray the felines really well. The entire company dances in accordance. And the characters do mingle with the audience during the show and recess.

Needless to say, WF went back feeling he had wasted his time and he almost wanted to 'cut loss' and leave during the break! We had really good seats, right in the middle of entire seating plan (the ticket agent recommended me this pair of seats and tell me the eye level to the stage is just right and it faces the centre of the stage etc). To think I had bought the tickets last Nov and had been looking forward to it so much! Yet.... Sigh....