Cats
Opera House,Artscape TheatreCentre Until January 27
Naked Boys Singing Warehouse Theatre Until December 23 and from December 26 to 31
Those cognoscenti who despise musical theatre complain the genre can be reduced to a few simple formulae. Well, it cant: take Cats, Andrew lloyd Webbers smash hit, which has finally made it here. The unlikely setting of a book of poems by highbrow poet TS Eliot, the show has no plot, no discernible lead characters, barely a theme and has run around the world for well nigh 21 years. The local production reproduces the West Ends with an infectious verve that is entirely homegrown. A large and youthful cast homegrown, too are uniformly excellent: Jo-Anne Robinson deserves hosannas for the inventive and integrated choreography, and the overall performance standard, vocal and otherwise, is inspired. Although the company itself is the evenings star, individuals who impress include Anton luitingh, a powerhouse of feline vitality; Marcus Desando, lending vocal majesty as the aged tom called Old Deuteronomy; and Warren Griffin, whose cameo as Gus the Theatre Cat is a gem of tender observation. The entire show is a ravishing blend of spectacle and sentiment, enlivened by Eliots droll, mischievous and brain-teasing lyrics and pleasantly buoyed by the undemanding wash of lloyd Webbers music. Cats is great holiday entertainment and its production values deserve emulation all over town. Naked Boys Singing is a revue of a different hue flesh-toned, to be precise. Devised with tongue in cheek according to formula (that mythical search again) to save los Angeless Celebration Theatre, the show features cute boys sans clothes performing vignettes comic and pseudo-serious about American gay life. The humour is pretty forced and the sentiment sometimes toe-curling, but the whole moves along with brio and the boys wobbly bits are touchingly out of sync with the choreography. An object lesson in striptease (flesh revealed from the start is decidely unerotic), Naked Boys Singing should amuse. Guy Willoughby