Yet more Cats (2019) thoughts

So when I say that it’s really interpreted with the Jellicles as 1981 London theater people and that makes it not very now-queer but pretty then-gay…

Like, “found family” is definitely a theme they hammer with the new viewpoint character Victoria. And the 1981 way that plays out is the emotional arc is unapologetically about insecure lowbie Mr. Mistoffeles coming into his own as a troupe member by welcoming her in and showing off for the sake of getting with her.

And yes, the awkward shy goth theater kid is still kinda gay-marked even if he gets with a girl. I wasn’t alive in 1981 but I was alive while it was still alive in cultural memory and we were still doing gay subtext and queer-coding then. Specifically, even musical theater with hetero plots was marked hella gay.

Tbh I really love what they did to give Mistoffeles a throughline. A subtle bit people might’ve missed, in the Old Gus song when he’s trying to use his magic wand for emphasis, in the stage show at that point there’s a big fire-snorting dragon mechanical prop effect, so that’s what you’re kind of expecting, but first a total fizzle and then some stage effects does a good job of calibrating the stakes.

(Also on the stage wasn’t there a pirate ship bit to the Gus song? Or was that a separate, cut number?)

And then having his title song as people pumping up his confidence enough that he can do real magic and resummon Deuteronomy – that’s honestly brilliant, resolving the new-grafted emotional and plot arcs using the original text.

It’s really great how they use the strengths of film to augment the stage musical core - the arcs are carried by very brief close-ups, intimate dialogue, and CUT TO:s, while pieces can be cut in ways to emphasize and twist meaning that would have to be done in music, vocals, or gesture on stage. Meanwhile they totally retain the option to go theatre-in-the-round, pull back and show you 15 incredible things at once of which you can follow at most 4.

They’re pretty consistent with the cat scale except in the theatre bits – if that was an actual human-size stage Gus would’ve been drowning in it. Also Grizabella on the chandelier that lifts her to the Heaviside Layer.

Oh, they replaced the tire lift with a chandelier skyhooked through a glass roof, which is also kinda an Andrew Lloyd Weber slant reference.