Cats stars visit Macau before curtains are drawn on Broadway musical

Erin Cornell, who plays the role of Grizabella in Cats and musical director Paul White performed the hit song “Memory”

Several key cast and crew members of the world renewed musical Cats visited The Venetian yesterday and met with journalists, answering questions about the show that’s coming back to town after seven years on March 6, this time staged at the Venetian Theatre. Among those present were Paul White (musical director), Makayla Bishop (company manager) and Erin Cornell (Grizabella, one of the main characters in Cats), who also performed the show’s timeless hit song “Memory.”
“The score is the star of many musical productions, with the music and the words. Andrew Lloyd Webber chose many different genres from big band swing to rock and roll, to opera, and to the magnificent song [‘Memory’]. So it’s a whole eclectic gathering of different styles of music, which is what makes it so popular and so appealing,” introduced Paul White.
The director, who has been working on many of major theatre productions over the last 25 years, praised the fact that Cats also presented a “music landscape that was unique, unusual and sort of wildly.”

Paul White; Erin Cornell; Scott Messinger and Makayla Bishop

“He [Webber] created a soundscape that doesn’t belong in any key like most the Western music where the tradition comes from. So it just was a completely unique sound he created that is used throughout the whole show from time to time,” he stressed, adding that these wild sounds helped creating “a cats’ world” that differs from the humans’.
Composed by legendary British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, the award-winning musical showcases various characters based on English poet T. S. Eliot’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.” Since its premier in London’s West End in 1981, it has been performed around the world in numerous productions including 18 years on Broadway.
“This production [to be staged in Macau] is the original Cats, with the beautiful orchestrations, and the score is the same. It’s a perfect score, so you can’t change it,” White told the reporters. “This show is 100 percent music, from beginning to end. There’s no spoken dialog, a little bit only,” he added.
“Sometimes about classic shows, if the show is really sounding dated, then the producers and creatives would put a broom through it to make it up-to-date. Cats actually sounds exactly as it should sound, because it’s so carefully crafted with the orchestrations and the music choices Webber made, there’s no need to update it,” he explained, although he added that some changes to the show are happening in London.
Speaking of the reasons why Cats is one of the most successful musicals of all time and still running, the production team’s manager Ms Makayla Bishop affirmed that the show “identifies with different generations.”
“Children can come and see Cats and they get excited seeing the dancing and people dressed up at Cats in costumes and wigs. And our older generation can enjoy it because they can remember that show and the songs; they remember hearing ‘Memory’ on the radio after it first came out by different artists covering it. So it really does span multiple generations,” she said.
Amongst all fragments of the show, character Grizabella’s singing “Memory” – a nostalgic remembrance of her glorious past and a declaration of her wishes to start a new life – is recognized as the climax.
Cast for the character, Ms Erin Cornell, performed the song at the media event. She said that to “keep Grizabella consistently truthful every performance” is a major challenge for her.
“Because it can be lost in just Grizabella singing Memory, [but] there’s a lot more to hear. There are so many layers; she’s a very quite complex character,” she stressed.
“It’s important for us to also be accommodating to audiences and to go with their flow. As much as us performing to them, hopefully they can perform to us in a certain way as well,” she added.
Interaction with the audience is also an element of the show. “The cast play with the audience sometimes. Not everybody will get a ‘cat’ sitting on their lap, but some people will,” said Mr White.
The Cats debuted in Macau at the Cultural Centre during Christmas 2007. Comparing to the classic auditorium, Paul White said that the semicircle Venetian also “suits Cats every well, because people can see it from different angles.”
“Although Cats did come here several years ago, that was a one-off. I think the entertainment industry in Macau is really on the rise now. Of course there’s always been a lot of entertainment, but the really high-level production entertainment hasn’t,” he indicated.
“I’ve always felt a little sad that a lot of our big productions from Australia would go to HK but not Macau. I know it’s close and you could capture both markets by just performing in HK,” the musical director said. “HK is clearly a much bigger city, if the producers are going to choose between one and the other, they’ll obviously choose HK, and it’s very expensive to move the show to another city. That might be changing now.”
The show will run from March 6 to 15. Moreover, The Venetian Macao said that it’s the first of several Broadway shows coming to its premises and the next one will arrive in June.

‘Multi-tiered entertainment strategy’

“Bringing a musical of the caliber of Cats to The Venetian Macao is yet another example of Sands China’s multi-tiered entertainment strategy in action,” according to Scott Messinger, Sands China’s senior vice president of marketing. “We continue working hard to support the Macau SAR government’s call to diversify entertainment in Macau and promote the city as a world center of tourism and leisure,” he added.