An oral history ofCatson Broadway, as told by its original cats.
Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
When it debuted, it felt edgy and immersive, with a punkish twist.
Of course, after a couple years it became this joke.
But it was the most spectacular thing of its time.
My friend had just convinced me to come to NY.
I had this slinky, lithe body and felt very feline.
I thought it wasKatz, like the deli.
Some people had agents who arranged auditions, but the rest of us went to the open call.
It was difficult because Gillian Lynne had made the dancing like cat movements.
I saw excellent dancers who couldnt get it.
When my group went up she pointed at me and said, You!
Thank you, everyone else.
Ard: It got down to last couple guys and then it was like, Who has tricks?
I did a roundoff, back handspring, back layout, and landed in the splits.
Nobody else had tricks.
So they gave me a callback.
My agent said, Youre going to be one of the principal people inCats!
When I woke up, I told my husband, I dreamed I gotCats.
Im walking down the beach and a guy is walking toward me with two Siamese cats on leashes.
I was with my friend Reed Jones, who went on to play Skimbleshanks.
Anyway, the cats walked around me three times.
Reed and I looked at each other, because we were both waiting to hear aboutCats.
Well, thats like asking someone, would you like $49 million?
I said, Oh myGod,yes.
Page: They were saying Cher was going to play Grizabella.
All kinds of names were being thrown around.
After [the cast was announced], I went to visit a friend whod gone up for Grizabella.
She said, Congratulations, but I have one question: Who the hell is Betty Buckley?
I said, Well, shes Grizabella!
Sebek: I was a pretty cocky kid back then.
He kept saying, More suicidal.
Ard: We basically crawled around and pretended to be cats.
Hack: After about a week, one gal wasnt having it.
Hoshour: I did have a cat.
He was very, lets say, temperamental.
Anna McNeely (Jennyanydots): Trevors thing was that we feel organically that we were cats.
He didnt want us hissing or meowing.
He wanted it to be coming from deep inside.
Donna King (Bombalurina): I got so into character.
I was an acrobat.
Page: At one point I was doing a lot of dancing in the opening sequence.
I said, Oh no!
I wanted to prove I can dance.
Hack: During rehearsals, Willie Rosario, whod been cast as Skimbleshanks, hurt his knee really badly.
Hoshour: In the middle of one rehearsal for the Jellicle Ball, Willie went down.
There was a scream, and everything in the room stopped.
The creative team put in his understudy, Reed Jones, and he became Skimbleshanks.
If nothing else, thatll tighten a cast really quick.
The most difficult thing is we were on a raked stage, meaning it was tilted.
There was every opportunity to hurt yourself.
I looked at the Armory and old warehouses.
But its a Broadway musical, and the Shuberts had a theater.
So Iused the theater.
Napier: I wasnt interested in doing the show in a proscenium theater with gilding and gold.
The Shuberts constantly told me how much it was costing them.
I said,Well, well find out whether youll get your money back!
Ray Huessy (set design assistant): We painted the entire theater black.
We cut a six-foot square hole in the decorative plaster ceiling for Grizabellas exit to the Heaviside Layer.
But we were building the stage out into the house, [so] that wasnt going to happen.
We had to have a fireman at every performance.
Its a complex set, but its a simple set.
Youre in one place.
The car trunk opened up and people crawled out, the oven opened up and dancers ran out.
But thats John Napier.
Hes a bit of a madman but also a genius.
Thats what he and John Napier wanted to create.
Ard: During rehearsals, thered be reporters outside, taking pictures.
It was maddening, and of course exciting because I felt like Id finally arrived.
McNeely: They were very, very careful at the beginning.
They didnt show any pictures out front just two eyes and Cats.
All of this came with challenges.
How do you maintain your body for perform such athletic feats month after month?
What do you do when you start slipping off the balcony in the middle of the show?
Hoshour: There was like nothing like that opening night.
Purina Cat Chow gave us each a bucket with a bottle of Champagne in it.
[They] lined the staircase going up to the dressing rooms.
Harry Groener (Munkustrap): Id never heard screaming like that from an audience.
The sound was so intense it pushed tears out of our eyes.
Page: The opening night party was at the Waldorf.
It was super star-studded.
It was hard to stay in the moment because the moment was so big.
King: My mother came from Kansas.
She watched Jessica Lange, Baryshnikov, Mary Tyler Moore, and Andy Warhol go in.
Later, the Factory rang me backstage and asked if Id like to do a shoot.
Andy [Warhol] picked me up in a limo and we drove out to a studio in Queens.
Groener: Jimmy Carter and his wife came.
Robert Redford brought his kids.
Gregory Peck led a standing ovation.
It went on for days he was so tall.
He was so gracious.
King: He said, Back in my day you all would have been stars.
Sebek: The most magical for me was Michael Jackson.
He came backstage and as he was leaving, he said to me, I like your spins!
Then we went over to the window.
Theyd pulled his limo up to the stage door.
There were all these people running from all the streets, like ants, to see him.
King:Frank Zappa watched the show then took me out dancing to Studio 54.
Hack: Some people loved it andsome didnt.
Some of my friends made fun of it.
One said we looked like monkeys.
He was a dog person.
Terrence Mann (Rum Tum Tugger): They had $6 million in box-office advance sales.
Everyone knew it was going to be running at least a couple years.
But then they slapped on that slogan Cats: Now and Forever.
Hack: The marketing team made that up and used that in place of a reviewers quote.
Nancy Coyne (advertising): Usually, youd put a reviewers quote on the marquee.
ButCatsdidnt get a great reviewfrom Frank Rich at the New YorkTimes, which was the only review that mattered.
I said, how about Now and Forever?
He said, Thats it and walked out.
Taylor: I told the producers, Now youve got your hit, but this is a strenuous show.
We only had four understudies and I said, We need at least eight.
They said, If thats what it takes.
Still, there were nights we ran out of understudies.
Hack: I understudied for four roles.
And I went on for all those characters many times.
Plus you were crawling on your hands and knees, which humans are not meant to do.
Sebek: I developed a stress fracture in my spine at 22 that totally changed my career.
Fortunately, I had a voice and could act.
We all knew we were killing our bodies to do this crazy job of a show.
There was a lot of putting on makeup fast.
Sometimes the understudys warmup was just running down four flights of stairs.
We were like, Hey!
Our makeup is just as complicated!
Napier: My intention was to make human beings be cat-like.
I didnt want it to be overt.
Hack: John would come back and smear peoples makeup.
Hed say, Youre not supposed to be pretty!
Youre supposed to be messy, like cats.
Kershaw:Imade my cat more feminine.
She definitely had pink lips and was a little more dolled up.
Groener: The wigs were made fromyak hair that gave it the look John wanted.
At the beginning wed spray this adhesive glue on our faces.
It was probably very unhealthy.
Ard: You have a body suit on and youd be soaking wet.
So youre basically naked.
Martin Levan (sound designer): [Sound was also] tricky.
Youd think the cats would have kept them away, wouldnt you!
But sweat would get in the connectors of the transmitter, so we put the transmitters in condoms.
Taylor: We needed one for every mic pack every show, so we were going through them.
I was literally trembling in the wings as they changed my mic then zipped me back into my costume.
A moment later it turns out that mics broken, too.
They replace it, and now this is split-seconds before Im supposed to enter.Thatmic wasnt working either.
[One reviewer] said my voice was strident.
I started going, la la, la la la.
Her performance made my hair stand on end.
We could really have hurt ourselves, especially if wed fallen off that balcony rail into the orchestra section.
Sebek: One of my castmates fell into the lap of Phil Donahue.
I looked up and was like, Im in Phil Donahues lap!
Mann: As Rum Tug Tugger, at one point Id bring somebody up onstage and dance with them.
One night I saw Bob Fosse in the audience wearing this powder-blue jacket.
I stopped right in front of him and started to grab his hands.
He said, Dont you fucking touch me.
I said, Yes sir, Im a big fan.
I jumped on his lap.
Ard: As we went through the audience, sometimes dancers would slip someone their number.
I did it once.
Sebek: There were these tubes that went from the basement into the audience that Id crawl out of.
One night this audience member saw me and said, Oh, what a cute kitty.
And she grabbed my face and kissed me right on the lips!
Sometimes audience members would get up onstage to chase a cat.
They didnt always realize the fourth wall.
Hack: There were a few people who came to the show hundreds of times.
One was a lady who had a huge irrational crush on Herman Sebek.
Another was this guy I ran into one night on the street.
He yelled out, Its Steven Hack fromCats!
I thought, Oh no.
Because any normal person would not have recognized me.
Backstage: This Freaking Show Sucks!
Certain cast members remember it contributing to offstage drama.
But most recalled the company as relatively tight.
For months, if not years, they prepared together, performed together, and partied together.
The original cast had also just begun to leave the company as the AIDS virus began spreading.
Ard: There would be times when Id leave and I couldnt get a cab.
It would be maddening.
Theyd pass by and pick up somebody else down the street.
Hoshour: My mom had no idea which one of the cats I was.
My wife only knew me because she recognized my butt.
I was just thrilled to be there.
But it didnt work well with a lot of egos.
And some egos had to find other ways to get their strokes.
Some of the backstage got to be a little tough.
Page: Id done three big shows before so people kind of knew me from those.
But it was very humbling.
You were part of this enormous event and yet what audiences saw inCatswas just the characters.
Kershaw: We got to do cool things.
We did the I Love NY commercials.
I did aWorking Womans spread.
Taylor: It was one of the happier companies.
Mind you, it helps to be doing a hit.
Kershaw: For those of us who were young, we were so innocent and not jaded.
In winter, Christine [Langner] and I built a beautiful snowman right outside the theater.
McNeely: Wed go out together.
That was in the Caramba!
New YorkTimes, 1983: The Tex-Mex restaurantCaramba!
Kershaw: Wed get dinner, have a margarita, decompress.
King: I ended up marrying John Napier.
We were married for ten years.
King: The dressing rooms were a trip.
Everyone was very eccentric.
Sebek: Most of the young dancing boys were put in a room.
The older dancing cats were put in another room.
And the gymnastic-y guys were in another room.
Everybody had their little posse.
One night Im in there and,knock knock knock, its the straight older cats.
The girls are like, Get out of here!
Theyre like, But Hermans in there!
And the girls were like, ItsHerman!
Its the little gay brother.
It did not turn out to be one at all.
We had a tape player wed playThriller and we had a small ice chest.
Because beer tasted so good at the end of the show.
He wanted to sleep or something.
Mann: Yelling out the door telling someone to shut the fuck up I can remember that.
But it wasnt like I was an older statesman who needed his rest.
Shed come off from the 12-minute Jellicle Ball and thered always be something shed have a major fit about.
Ard: That Jellicle Ball was incredibly difficult.
You dance and dance and dance and then you have to stop and sing.
This producer was like, Rene, go inside.
Rene used to come on the subway with her full makeup on.
Hack: AIDS soon started rearing its horrible ugly head.
We lost a bunch of castmates to that plague.
Mercado: One got sick and then another.
They would come in after taking a week off and do a show or two.
Then youd walk in to find out the understudy was in again.
There was so much fear.
Page: These are people burned in your memory as being so alive and electric.
There are no words to bring into focus how many people were dying and how quickly.
Hoshour: A few years later I took my daughter to see the show.
It was one of the hardest things Ive ever done.
As far as the whole history ofCatsin that period, AIDS will be the thing that Ill remember.
Also, that these are our family members, and we wanted to stay with our family.
Hoshour: Its hard to leave a good contract, but it was very wearing on the body.
He said [in fact], They had to take stuffoutwhen you left.
Thats what your memory does.
I couldnt even remember what Id once been capable of.
When youre young and energetic youll do anything.
Or that I didnt make it to the Winter Garden on time.
But I ended up directing eight other productions ofCats, and spread out over the years it was fun.
It was always so exciting to watch.
Napier: I remember thinking,Wed be lucky to get away with this.
Its astounding to me that, even to this day, there is a demand forCats.
Taylor: Theres always been the knock that theres no plot.
But theres something that resonates.
A show doesnt run all those years unless its emotionally involving.
Kershaw: For children, it has an aliveness they tap into.
For older people, it speaks to the tender fragility of life.
It became kind of a joke.
But its now and forever, right?
