Commentary : Meeoow: O.C. Arts Going to the ‘Cats’

One man’s opinion:

Did they really build a $73 million concert hall to bring “Cats” in for the fourth time?

I suppose there is nothing morally reprehensible about the idea. But the Orange County Performing Arts Center’s announcement this week that it is bringing back Andrew Lloyd Webber’s kitschy mega-musical in August is a signal that theatrical programming is business as usual at the marbled palace of the arts in Costa Mesa.

For the dozens of millionaires and corporations that put up the money to build the privately funded center and for the thousands who made smaller donations--and for the tens of thousands of theatergoers who have flocked to Broadway shows there--business as usual may be regarded as a great and hard-won accomplishment.

They can point out, justly, that 10 years ago, before the center was built, you couldn’t have seen a national touring production of a Broadway musical anywhere in the county, let alone at its geographical center.

You had to take the traffic-maddening drive to Long Beach or Los Angeles or San Diego or, on rare occasions, La Mirada, to get a peek at Broadway’s newest fashions and, let’s not kid ourselves, Broadway’s oldest fashions.

But to bring “Cats” in again at this late date may be regarded as a failure of imagination. It is another sign that, even after a change of top management, and despite the best of intentions, there is something hollow at the center of the center’s theatrical programming. It’s a bit like the building’s ground-floor lobby: For all the plush carpeting, wood paneling and mirrors, it feels architecturally beside the point.

A few facts: The $2 million production of “Cats” coming to the center for a two-week engagement (Aug. 8-20) is the same expensive bus-and-truck version that has been touring the country since 1987. Not only did it play the center twice in 1988 and once in 1989, it has been around the block 14 times elsewhere in the Southland.

Now, I know that “Cats” is “the longest-running musical currently on Broadway,” as its publicist says, and that maybe it’s even “the longest continuously touring musical in history in the U.S.A.,” as he also says.

I’m willing to believe him when he says that various “Cats” road companies (mainly this one) have played in every state in the union except Vermont, New Hampshire and New Jersey and that the trucks carrying the sets have logged more than half a million miles.

And I won’t dispute him when he says “Cats” has grossed five times what “E.T.” has worldwide--$2 billion contrasted with $400 million.

But that is precisely the point. Do we really need to see Webber’s kittenish musical treatment of T.S. Eliot’s light verse again?

I don’t begrudge those who have never seen “Cats” their chance to take part in musical-theater history. Nor do I begrudge the center’s theatergoers their fondest wish.

According to a survey conducted by the center last summer, when audiences were asked to pick three musicals they most would like to see from a list of a dozen, “Cats” came out as the top choice, in a virtual dead heat with “Les Miserables.”

(The other titles were “Beauty and the Beast,” “Carousel” “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” “Damn Yankees,” “Miss Saigon,” “Showboat,” “West Side Story,” “Funny Girl,” “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.”

(Probably the only reason “Cats” came out on top is that “The Phantom of the Opera” and “Sunset Boulevard” were not listed. Mind-boggling, isn’t?)

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I certainly don’t begrudge the center its chance to book “Cats” as many times as they want for the millions of unborn countians who eventually may want to see it. Nor do I begrudge the center a chance to fill whatever financial potholes it needs to fill to keep its budget balanced.

“Cats” will help offset the cost of other, far more interesting programming, such as the Royal Danish National Ballet and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. And after all, the argument goes, the center is merely serving its audience.

But I consider it lucky, in view of the inevitable, that we’re getting “Cats” for just two weeks instead of the four originally planned. (Its run had to be cut to accommodate last-minute changes in dates for “Jekyll & Hyde” (Aug. 22-27) and “Stage Door Charley” (June 27-July 9).)

Some months back, Tom Tomlinson, the center’s executive director, told The Times he was searching for a “blockbuster” musical to fill the house as “The Phantom of the Opera” had done last summer. That show set house records for a Broadway musical and earned the center roughly $50,000 a week.

Presumably the center hopes to do the same with “Cats.” May they earn pots of gold. But meanwhile, bottom-line programming doesn’t lend credibility to devout management claims about the nobility of its arts mission.