Artist Quotes - Tumblr Posts
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.)
“I’m a fuckin’ slut for cinnamon raisin bread”
- Corpse Husband December 3rd, 2020
Me too, Corpse. Me too
“All I’m saying is that if everyone wore fursuits, Covid would’ve never happened.”
- Corpse Husband
"If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.” Edward Hopper
“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” Andy Warhol