CATS performance set in Crossville
“We were lucky to get the rights before the show is in general release for professional theaters,” says Jim Crabtree, producer at Cumberland County Playhouse where CATS will captivate audiences in performances through Aug. 9.
Stephanie Lang, director/choreographer for the CCP production, played the cat Cassandra on Broadway and in the national tour. “It was a great experience to work with Gillian Lynn, the original Broadway choreographer and associate director of CATS,” said Lang.
CATS will feature singer-dancers from across the country, along with Playhouse professionals and a group of the theater’s most experienced and trained teen and youth dancers. They’ll combine as the beloved character cats and a special group of additional “kittens” to create the first regional theater production of CATS south of Pittsburgh.
The set for the CCP production will be an abandoned theatre, instead of the traditional junkyard. Chicago’s Marriott Theater production of the show, which Crabtree and Lang attended, was set in an abandoned amusement park, which inspired a different Crossville approach.
“The amusement park was great fun,” said Lang. “There is so much in the show about show business that we got excited about putting our CATS in an abandoned theater. It will make Gus the Theater Cat and Grizabella feel right at home.”
The Playhouse’s Britt Hancock, who has sung and danced his way through a dozen major roles at the theater, portrays Rum Tum Tugger, with Weslie Webster, who starred in the most recent national tour of Carousel, singing “Memory” as Grizabella, the aging “glamour cat.” Juilliard dance whiz Lakendrick Carter comes from New York to be Mr. Mistoffelees, and Broadway veteran Jack Irvin plays the wise Old Deuteronomy, with Renee McKinney assisting Ms. Lang and playing Rumbelteazer.
Nationally prominent scenic designer Joe Varga, designer of the Playhouse’s productions of Peter Pan, Oklahoma and The Secret Garden, joins the CATS production team from his base at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Also returning to the Playhouse, from New York, is singer/dancer Elizabeth Block as Bombalur in State Fair and tapping up a storm in Crazy for You.
Also playing is the tenth Playhouse edition of Smoke on the Mountain until Oct. 28, and the wild, hilarious comedy The Foreigner showing through Aug. 28. For tickets and information, call the Playhouse box office at 931-484-5000.