CATS

Three years ago on my sixteenth birthday, my mother said we were going to have a trip to Chengdu and there she had a surprise for me. We drove for almost three hours and reached a hotel. After dinner that night, mom asked me to go out with her. We walked for about twenty minutes. I kept asking where we were going and what on earth the surprise is, but she just stayed quiet. We went into the theater and it wasn't until we sat down and my mom handed me the program that I knew what I was going to see. I had not yet fallen in love with musicals at that time so I didn’t know there was a Cats play in Chengdu.

Two weeks ago, I went to watch the play the second time. But this time it was not in Chengdu but in Singapore. I went to the Esplanade---the biggest theater in Singapore---alone at Thursday night and again was amazed by Cats.

The whole play is almost plotless. It takes place in a junkyard at night. Once a year, all those cats will hold a special Ball where they gather in the junkyard and follow their urge to dance under the full moon. At the end of the Ball, the leader of the cats, takes a selected cat to the Heaviside Layer which is a sort of cat-heaven.

The costumes were absolutely amazing. The actors and actresses wore tails, wigs, and thick makeup, looking like different cats. The craftsmanship and style that went into each one was very remarkable. The style of each cat fit each actor's personality perfectly. I never knew that cats had so many different personalities.

However, what impressed me most in Cats was its music. I think anyone else who has seen the play will say the same. From Memory to The Naming of Cats, all of them are songs that will touch your heart and live in your minds forever.