Zurich 1992: Matt Baker As Tumblebrutus, Lindsay Chambers As Mistoffelees, Brian Carmack As Tugger.

Zurich 1992: Matt Baker as Tumblebrutus, Lindsay Chambers as Mistoffelees, Brian Carmack as Tugger.

And Lindsay knows what’s up!

This photo was posted in a facebook group for members of the Zurich production and following European tour, and some people have also joined the group who are members of latest Cats casts. One of these is Karl Warden, who was Plato in the Troika tour (US tour 5), 2001–2003. He made a small mistake when he saw this photo, but the following comment thread was fascinating:

Karl: you had a female misto!?!?!? Lindsay: How do you think I made 7 kittens? Karl: LOL! I’m sorry Lindsay! I’ve never known a male lindsay and you’re BEAUTIFUL in misto makeup so forgive me please! Lindsay: LOL I’ve directed the show now twice and I’m always on the lookout for a female Misto since I think what T.S. Elliot had in mind in the poem Karl: and you’ve never found one!? I’d think it’d be easy to find a female misto… Lindsay: I have. Now, letting me direct the show again (twice) is another story. Look for my college-buddy Andrew B. to shake things up around Christmas time. and Cats will be the wild wild west Lindsay: also, I WAS sexy as fuck

By the way, he’s absolutely right. About half the jokes in the poems are about parodying various human tropes/stereotypes (like the way ‘Macavity’ riffs off Arthur Conan Doyle’s description of Moriarty in “The Final Problem”) and the other half are mostly of the ‘you know that cat who is just like that’ variety (like the officious Skimblecat running around and checking on all the humans in his space and believing he’s so important that nothing can be done without him).

And the simplest and most obvious reading of the ‘seven kittens’ line is ‘and he’s also that cat who you thought was male and your kids named Mr X and then he started getting obsessed with the linen cupboard and suddenly there was a nest and kittens in there’. Cats aren’t actually all that easy to sex visually, so it was actually a fairly common happening up until the last couple of decades (with the normalisation of ‘actually you should take a cat to the vet regularly instead of just in emergencies’). You can add extra layers of interpretation to the line, of course, but that’s the immediate trope that Eliot’s referencing: in the poem, Mistoffelees is biologically female.

And on the stage he, she, or they is sexy as fuck.

(Btw, as always: this isn’t me telling you what to headcanon about the character! The musical is not the poem, and every Mistoffelees is different, and headcanons are free.)

Ken Page as Old Deuteronomy and Jessica Hendy as Grizabella at the Gateway in Bellport

wait. richard armitage came out!?!?

i'm so happy for him!! ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

Broadway Gruberstrap my beloved

Why must he be so handsome? A definite cure for the blues 🤍🖤

But also listen to this, I’m dying. 

My personal favorite picture of Michael Gruber rn <33

[ This is Michael Gruber and Jimmy Spadola (Michael playing “Billy Crocker” and Jimmy playing “Moonface Martin”) on the set of the musical “Anything Goes” ]