Twelve years ago I was a young college student studying theater, and living in a house with about twelve other theater students.

At that time, the musical Cats was in the 16^th year of its long Broadway run, and had recently been filmed for PBS and released on VHS.  Yes, you read that correctly, VHS.  Two of my housemates who had never seen the British musical rented the video, and were watching it when another of our roommates returned home from class.  This third roommate, lovely and talented though she is, was (to quote Foghorn Leghorn) “about as sharp as a beach ball.” The conversation which transpired went something like this:

Hi, cat.

“What are you guys watching?”

“Cats.”

“The musical?  Huh.  How long is it?”

“About two hours.”

“That’s weird.  I heard it was the longest running musical of all time.”

You may wonder why I’m sharing this anecdote with you.  Well, I was reminded of it the other night when I was watching the news and saw a commercial for the musical’s upcoming run at Chrysler Hall. The reason I think it significant is simple.  Cats was old back then: when DVD players were expensive luxuries, and video stores, where we rented VHS tapes to play in our VCRs, were still culturally relevant places. There was no Netflix, no Red Box, and no YouTube. Cats (which would close a couple of years later) was still the longest running Broadway musical of all time, and was still expected to run in perpetuity.  It was arguably the most popular musical of the Reagan and Thatcher administrations, and hasn’t been performed on Broadway in nearly a decade. Which begs the question:  why is it playing in Norfolk this weekend?

I mean, seriously, unless you’re in grade school, or were in an eighteen year coma which lasted from 1982 to 2000 you’ve probably already seen it. Unless you’re the type of person who would never see such a thing, in which case you won’t see it no matter how many bus and truck companies blow through town. The fact that one still has the opportunity to see the show in a small-scale recreation of its original production is inconceivable to me. After all, Cats may have been popular, but it was never very good.

Cats at play.

The musical’s “plot,” at least as I’ve always understood it, is mostly an excuse for insipid half-songs and acrobatic feats of terpsichorean skill.  It’s neither a plotted book musical, nor a true musical revue.  Mostly, a variety of cats of varying personalities sing songs about themselves until a cat which is God (or something) takes a cat which is a prostitute (or something) aboard a spaceship (or something) on a flaming tire.  Entertaining?  Hardly.  The most remarkable things about Cats, at least in its original incarnation, were the environmental set by John Napier (which recreated a junk yard from a cat’s perspective), and Gillian Lynne’s non-stop choreography. Lloyd Webber’s music was typically mediocre and repetitive. What is perhaps most interesting about the musical is the fact that its lyrics are by the celebrated poet T.S. Eliot.  Lifted from Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, Eliot’s slim volume of children’s poems, the lyrics are often witty, but sometimes bizarre. I, for one, have never understood what a jellicle cat is, or why he or she should want to go to a jellicle ball.

Of course, Cats wasn’t the only British musical of the eighties which was light on substance and heavy on spectacle, but it was the first.  Along with the slightly superior Les Misérables (currently the third longest running Broadway musical), Miss Saigon later, and Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera (currently the longest running and showing no signs of stopping), Cats (currently second longest running) is historically important mostly as a harbinger of the death of the Broadway musical.  After all, the longer these musicals ran, the less they resembled theatrical events, instead transforming into tourist traps:  something it was de rigueur for visitors to NYC to do before their trip was done.

Miss Saigon's famous--and expensive--helicopter.

Expensively overproduced, and relying on costly coups de theatre (flying tires, falling chandeliers, dizzy actors on a turntable, and helicopters) to sustain business, the most significant contribution of these shows was to make it nearly impossible for a small, well-written musical to have a chance. In order to compete with these white elephants, American musicals had to become bigger, grander, and less substantive. Producing of musicals, which was always financially risky, became a full-on multi-million dollar crap shoot, and nowadays musicals don’t even get produced if they don’t come presold. So, instead of musicals like My Fair Lady and Fiddler on the Roof, the Broadway of our generation hosts live-action versions of cartoon movies, and pop music revues which used to be the staple of theme parks and cruise ships. These British musicals, in my estimation, are not culture. They are the enemies of culture: instead of enriching Broadway theater they pretty much destroyed it.

Whether or not you agree with my opinion of Cats is a matter of personal taste; certainly the musical has its adherents or it wouldn’t have run for eighteen years and been translated into ten languages. However, its less than salutary effect on theater and its complete lack of cultural relevance twenty-eight years later are hard to deny. This is why I find it so troubling that the show is back again. The promotional materials used to say “Now and Forever.” I guess they weren’t lying.

I’m sure you’re wondering what this has to do with us. After all, Broadway isn’t in Tidewater. Or is it? Long ago it became common wisdom in the United States that theater without Broadway credentials wasn’t real theater.  Savvy theater-going New Yorkers know, of course, that (at least now) the most interesting theater is in off-Broadway houses, or is being created in regional theaters. It is a message the provinces seem not to have heard. Historically, theater is created for and nurtured by the community in which it exists; and in other places throughout the world this is still true. But in the United States New York creates the theater for the country, and theater that doesn’t originate there is useless. This is a fallacy, but it is widely regarded as truth.

Whether we mean for it to be that way or not, many of these attitudes persist in our own community and often local theaters suffer in comparison to the slick commercial tours that play at Chrysler Hall. Don’t mistake my meaning, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with national tours of Broadway shows.  They bring mainstream New York culture to audiences who may not otherwise get the opportunity to see it, and I myself enjoyed performances of Avenue Q, Spamalot, and Wicked last season. The City of Norfolk and Seven Venues facilitate our access to these shows, but they also do a lot to support the local theaters that struggle to find the audiences these national tours seldom lack.

Our local Generic Theater puts on much smaller productions, like 'Letters For A Young Girl.'

But despite their invaluable support and the hard-toiling creative class who produce exciting, innovative work, Tidewater struggles to have a cultural identity of its own. This is not because of national tours, but because of the perception of certain audiences that local theater is somehow less significant or dignified than that which is rooted in the Broadway or West End tradition. Many people will attend Cats this weekend, just as they have attended the many other shows at Chrysler Hall, without ever realizing that they could just as easily attend a show at Generic Theater in Chrysler Hall’s basement, or down the street at Virginia Stage Company, or at the area’s myriad other theaters. In doing this, we unintentionally create a negative effect on our community; the same type of negative effect we create when we bypass the locally owned grocery on our way to Wal-Mart.  We all do it, even though we know that we shouldn’t.

To those who will go to Chrysler Hall this weekend to see Cats (although I will never understand why!), I hope that you enjoy it, whether you are seeing it for the first time or the one hundred and first.  But if you enjoy these shows, I beseech you to think about checking out the theater that is produced by local companies.  There is an exciting theatrical community that has been working hard to serve you for years.  But they can’t survive without your patronage. I know that together we can create a flourishing theatrical community of our own, which can nicely complement the visiting New York shows. I know we can do it. I know we can.

Cats runs at Chrysler Hall all weekend. Go here for more information or tickets.