For the Purr at Heart

As a cat chorus fills the night air, an old boot gets hurled in their direction.

That image, from the opening number of “Cats,” has gained another meaning since the show opened in London in May 1981 and New York 1 1/2 years later. Pundits keep hurling abuse at Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical, bemoaning its one-joke concept (singers-dancers behaving like cats), its lack of plot (other than some gibberish about felines gathering for a ball) and its lackluster score (other than the catchy “Memory”).

Yet audiences keep setting out bowls of cream, and the singing felines have stuck around.

The show has returned to the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa for its fourth engagement there since 1988, and--though this touring company does nothing to distinguish itself--it nevertheless delighted Tuesday’s opening night audience, which included many preteens and their parents.

Therein lies one explanation for the show’s enduring success: Its G-rated themes make it good entertainment for youngsters, and parents who loved the show as children are bringing their kids. For all ages, the show’s relative simplicity makes it instantly accessible. Anyone who has seen a cat scamper across a yard or groom itself in a sunbeam can grasp this catalog of feline behavior.

Lloyd Webber built his kitty opera mostly from the children’s poems in T.S. Eliot’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.” The result is, essentially, a listing of kinds of cats: fat ones and thin, mischievous ones and lazy ones, theater cats and railway cats. The plot involves the gathering of a brotherhood--the Jellicles--for its yearly ball, at which the wisest selects one to be reborn.

The poetry is a bit rough-going at times; the business about who and what the Jellicles are is all but incomprehensible. Indeed, the song easiest to grasp is not entirely lifted from Eliot: “Memory,” with text assembled and adapted by the show’s director, Trevor Nunn.

No matter; the audience is swept along in Gillian Lynne’s choreography (reproduced here by T. Michael Reed and Richard Stafford), which--while not exactly groundbreaking--playfully suffuses ballets, follies, jazz numbers and court dances with cat-like movement.

And, as always, there is much joy in spending a while in John Napier’s larger-than-life dump (reproduced in down-scaled form here by Raymond Huessy), with its abandoned car, tattered floor lamp, broken-out barrel and other imaginative touches.

“Cats” is the rare show in which the second act improves upon the first. After the aging fat cats, petty-thief cats and other rather boring types, we finally see the really cool cats in the latter portion.

Craig Ricks delivers a nice turn as Gus, the aging theater cat. He’s touchingly brittle and palsied, turning amusingly pompous in a flashback in which he preens through a long-ago stage triumph, overacting and one-upping his romantic interest, Jeanne Montano, in a mock pirate operetta. Brian Barry turns in the most secure dance performance as the magician-thief Mr. Mistoffelees, leaping, spinning and generally sending the audience into a tizzy.

The true scene-stealing belongs to the actress playing faded glamour cat Grizabella: Natalie Toro. Reflecting on Grizabella’s glittering youth in “Memory,” Toro’s voice swells to an impressive belt, and the old cat’s hesitant, arthritic movements momentarily regain their past grace.

The rest of the cast is solid, though a voice here or a movement there is not as strong as it could be. The staging, once seemingly packed with special effects--glowing cat eyes, levitating tire--seems quaintly old-fashioned.

Yet you can be sure that as the show continues here through Sunday, audiences will keep setting out the cream.

BE THERE

“Cats,” Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Today and Friday, 8 p.m.; Saturday, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. $21-$52.50. (714) 740-7878. Running time: 2 hours, 50 minutes.