In case you haven’t been paying attention, Cats: The Jellicle Ball is not the Cats you think you know—the one set in a junkyard that played for 18 years on Broadway and then was made into a bafflingly bad movie. (Or so I’ve heard. I haven’t made it past the trailer.)
No, this Cats has been mashed up with New York’s queer ballroom scene, with its houses and competitive dance categories. If none of this means anything to you, stop reading now and go watch Paris Is Burning, the classic documentary from 1990.
It’s not that T. S. Eliot was queer, or that Andrew Lloyd Webber’s original production of Cats envisioned such a reading. But what’s remarkable is how natural the fit is between the Eliot/Lloyd Webber creation and queer ballroom culture.
