Cats at Regent's Park: Drew McOnie's high-octane revival makes the weird work
A sexed-up, naturalistic take on the 1980s phenomenon proves the Jellicle Ball still has claws, even if the casting leans young.
Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats has always been an acquired taste, a musical that asks audiences to accept grown adults pretending to be alley cats for two and a half hours. The 2019 film adaptation did the show no favours, cementing its reputation as bizarre nonsense. But Drew McOnie's new production at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre suggests the problem was never the material, only the execution.
McOnie, who directs and choreographs, has stripped away the pirouetting polish of previous versions. His ensemble moves like actual cats, flopping, hissing and prowling across Sami Fendall's minimalist moon-shaped set. The result is visceral rather than theatrical, a pack mentality that feels startlingly alive. Jaydon Vijn's Rum Tum Tugger channels Harry Styles swagger, while the duo Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer bring genuine cheek to their antics.
The emotional centre remains Grizabella's Memory. On press night, understudy Taziva-Faye Katsande delivered a vocally superb performance, though her youth undercuts the character's world-weariness. Similarly, Melanie La Barrie, at 51, brings vitality to Old Deuteronomy but lacks the ancient gravity Eliot wrote. The production leans thoroughly youthful, a choice that energises the ensemble but softens the meditation on mortality that underpins the Jellicle Ball.
Two moons over the park
Fendall's design places a luminous moon above the stage, inviting glances toward the real sky, a clever touch for an open-air venue. Under that double light, the show's abstract wisdom lands more surely than it has in decades. The narrative remains loose, the anthropology of cats opaque, but McOnie's conviction carries it through.
What this means for the West End
If a park production can make Cats feel dangerous and alive again, the door opens for a broader reappraisal of Lloyd Webber's back catalogue. The show runs until 19 September, offering London audiences a rare chance to see the musical as it might have been imagined: feral, physical and unapologetically strange.
