Matt Polk
The ensemble of Pittsburgh CLO's "Cats" breathe new life into the musical icon.
Click photo for larger version 'Cats' Where: Pittsburgh CLO, Benedum Center, Downtown.
When: Tues.-Fri. 8 p.m., Sat. 2 and 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m.
Tickets: $16.50-$57.50; 412-456-6666.

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After a week free to concentrate on rehearsing, abandoning us to make do with a ho-hum touring production of "Camelot," the 2007 CLO company reclaimed its Benedum Center base Tuesday with a winning version of the all-time popular dansical, "Cats."

I'll admit it's never been that popular with me. Sitting astride Broadway for 18 years -- and do you remember the hysteria of the early '80s, when standing out front of the Winter Garden with a couple of extra tickets to sell gave a greater adrenaline rush than the show itself? -- it also launched wave after wave of felines in national tours.

So I saw it a lot. Gradually my disappointment at its slip-shod narrative and electronic bombast mellowed. "Cats" is what it is. Now, seeing it again, I enjoy it as a feast of performance, a showcase for the CLO ensemble of which I'm fond.

The key is that "Cats" is an ensemble piece, not in the sense of "42nd Street," say, where the unified dancing ensemble powers the show, but in that CLO ensemble members get to show their individual talents, bolstered by visitors in a half-dozen featured roles.

But "Cats" is more than that: it's also a tribal musical, with a significance to a generation of performers equal to that of "A Chorus Line" before it and "Phantom" and "Les Mis," since. Each, with its multiple national tours grinding on and on, provided massive employment and served as a grad school for young performers.

But now the producing rights are available to regional companies, just as a new, post-"Cats" generation of young pros has arrived in the CLO ensemble are. So in just two weeks' rehearsal they have had to learn huge dance roles unlike their more usual tap-and-character work. And judging by the evidence on stage, "Cats" has benefitted, since these performers have brought a sense of fresh discovery to the old kittycat cavorting.

"Cats" is less about story than character. It has an occasion, the Jellicle Ball, an annual all-comers event mixing working cats, house cats (less evident), renegades and vagabonds. Each shows off in turn, but there is also a group dynamic as they react to the most distinctive among them and wait for the tribal shaman, Old Deuteronomy, to pick one cat to ascend to the Heavidside Layer and be reborn.

Not that there's any tension, since the obvious candidate is Grizabella, formerly glamorous, now bedraggled and outcast. The fit young felines shrink back from her in disgust with an "I'll never be like that" contempt -- or perhaps fear that they might.

With Broadway headliner Dee Hoty playing Grizabella, it's easy to see this as a parable: the lithe young performers shrinking from the vision of future decay (which comes quick to dancers). Fortunately she is accepted at the end, the tribal instinct coming through.

The same story of old age re-born is repeated in the large inset story of Gus, the aged theater cat, which gives way to the Growltiger adventure, a charming little parody of a Puccini opera of romance and comeuppance.

Opening night, there was some ragged work on timing individual mics and spotlights. And in some choral passages the lyrics weren't clear. This is a rare occasion when we really do want to hear the lyrics in an Andrew Lloyd Webber score, since they originate with the old cat man himself, T.S. Eliot and his "Book of Practical Cats." That source explains the London jokes, some of them quite arcane, as in Bustopher Jones' life in clubland.

The musical's key text is Eliot's moving poem about "The Naming of Cats," the three levels of which well express the feline mystique.

So it's odd that it's sometimes hard to figure out which cat is which, aside from those everyone else sings about, such as Macavity, Mistoffeles, Rum Tum Tugger, et al. But they all have personalities (catalities?), all the more apparent for having seen so many of the performers in earlier shows.

Grizabella has relatively little to do other than exude despair and then absolutely nail the show's anthem, "Memory," and Hoty does, twice. Playing the capable ringmaster is Ian Knauer as Munkustrap, and Ken Prymus reprises with tremulous authority the Old Deuteronomy he has often played. Kevin Loreque's Rum Tum Tugger is a spirited Elvis and Jacob Brent is a popular Mister Mistoffeles.

I was especially interested in watching Kathryn Lin Terza and Kaitlyn Davidson, ensemble members I interviewed Sunday, and they are standouts. (My third interviewee, Patrick Cummings, sings in the pit.) Terza is a cute and agile Demeter, with several featured bits, and Davidson is Victoria, the white cat who attracts our gaze and rewards it with gracefully gymnastic contortions. Victoria also has thematic significance as the young cat most drawn to Grizabela.

Alison Levenberg also draws the eye as the lithe Siamese, Cassandra. Danette Holden sparkles as the sexy Bombalurina; she ends the show being pursued in heat by an aroused Rum Tum Tugger. There are others to praise, because so many make themselves distinctive.

The set is the standard "Cats" environment of oversize debris, lit by strings of colored lights that extend into the front of the house, where occasionally some of the kitties roam.

I apologize to musical director Tom Helm's pit orchestra, 16 strong, for forgetting to compliment it last week for its solid work on "Camelot," where the score is the thing. This week it does Andrew Lloyd Webber proud, even though the score is a more repetitious matter.

The director/choreographer who pulled this all together so well is Richard Stafford. I may have seen better solo dancing on occasion and even sharper ensemble work, but "Cats" as a whole has never given me more pleasure.