[Reeza]

A week ago I went to see a community theatre production of CATS in Spartanburg, South Carolina. I've never seen an amateur production, so I was a little worried.

When I got there, I realized that I knew about 7 people in the cast due to other shows I had been involved in. This relaxed me a little bit, but I was also jealous because I thought that had I known ahead of time, I could have been involved.

The production ended up being passable. They had some really interesting ideas.

The set looked really good. It was set on a roof top. The costumes were good too. I think they were rented.

There were a few extra characters, so some were hard to recognize.

One interesting thing was how they did Rumpus Cat. Instead of a person, they used a puppet. A giant cat head with red spinning eyes dropped down to the stage. Then it had streamers for arms with claws on the end. Two cast members waved the streamers around so the claws moved around the stage.

Later on during Mistoffelees he came out across the stage on a zipline. Also, a female sang his song which I liked. I suppose there's no reason why Tugger has to sing the song, considering he already has his own.

As with any show, there were its problems. The one thing I really didn't like was that the cast meowed at everything, to the point where it was distracting. This was how they responded to the dialogue, and other lines in the show.

Also, I don't think it was very clear that Old D was kidnapped, because the guy playing Macavity was much smaller, and his disguise didn't match Old D's costume. Therefore, when Old D came back, no one seemed to care.

So that's pretty much all I have to report. Over all, I think they pulled it off though.