THEATRE REVIEW: ‘Cats’ repetition good for kids
About 1,000 students are at USU this week for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival.
Of 194 performances from universities in Region VIII, which includes Utah, Nevada, Arizona, California, Hawaii and Guam, eight were selected to be performed, including “The Boy Who Drew Cats” from USU.
“Cats” is an adaptation of a Japanese folk tale and has a cast of nine. Adee Reed plays the son of a poor farmer and his wife. After a huge storm, the family can’t afford to feed the boy, and he is sent to the village temple to be apprenticed to a priest.
The priest asks the boy to write scripture on the walls of the temple, but he draws cats instead. This play is a story about how the boy learns an important lesson: to always follow your dreams.
Overall, I really enjoyed this play. It was cleverly written, and the acting was done well. Reed, although a woman, did a great job of playing the boy, and the ensemble was entertaining. The sets were about as simple as they could be — mostly cloth and lights, but they maneuvered well, so the story was able to flow without any scene changes.
The music, two flutes, a keyboard and some percussion instruments, and the bright colors helped set the scene in Japan. The costumes, like the sets, were simple but worked as well.
The eight actors in the ensemble played a variety of roles and were able to switch costumes and move around quickly and efficiently. As scripted, they also finished each other’s sentences right on cue, which was very entertaining.
“The Boy Who Drew Cats” works especially well for children. The lesson is simple, and the acting is very animated, with large hand and body movements. The actors use a lot of expression in their voices and faces when they talk, and they periodically point to the audience and move through the aisles. Also, some things are repeated over and over throughout the story, which is effective with kids.
Going into the play, I questioned how exciting a boy drawing cats could be. And while the production wasn’t thrilling, it had enough humor and plot developments to keep my attention. There were a few original songs in “Cats,” which weren’t anything spectacular, but the singing was done well.
It started to drag about three-fourths of the way through, however. By that time, the boy had been kicked out by the priest, a Samurai and an old women because he kept drawing cats, “precious, precocious and powerful cats.”
I knew the climax must be coming soon, but I wondered how long the boy would keep failing at his jobs because he couldn’t stop drawing cats — on the walls, in a rock garden, with the burnt end of a stick. I thought that soon there wouldn’t be anyone to turn him away because everyone in the village would have kicked him out already. Fortunately, the end came before too long. We finally find out who has been damaging the countryside. The boy and his cats save the village from the destroyer that has been terrorizing them — a rat bigger than a cow. The ending of the play keeps the mood consistent with its folklore origin by leaving the audience wondering if the cats had really come to life or not. To this day, no one knows if they really came to life except the boy who drew the cats.”
“Cats,” which takes about an hour from start to finish, was performed twice last week for the public and twice yesterday for the KC/ACTF. It will be evaluated Friday at 9 a.m., according to the theater department’s Web site www.usu.edu/theatre.
Katrina Brainard is a senior studying print journalism. Comments can be sent to kcartwright@cc.usu.edu.