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Cats is something of a theatrical milestone and
is without doubt, the Tom Cat musical of them all.
Andrew Lloyd Webber took TS Elliot's Old Possums
Book of Cats and set the poems to music.
There were those who thought he was barking mad
to attempt this kid of feline fantasy on stage. But young producer
Cameron Mackintosh believed in the project and backed it. The rest
is musical history.
The show is now enjoying a UK tour and stars Stuart
Ramsay as Rum Tum Tugger with Matthew Cutts as Munkustrap.
Six nights a week, the actors make the amazing
transformation from human to feline - a feat worthy of the magical
Mr Mistoffelees.
"It takes me around 20 minutes to do my make-up
for the show," said Cutts.
"When we were in rehearsals we were given
a template of what colours we needed.
"The make-up designer did half our face in
make-up and then we had to replicate it, the mirror image, until
the whole face was done.
"They'd then take photos of it and we were
obliged to practise it until it became second nature. Now it's not
that time-consuming, so it's not that bad doing this around six
days a week," he added.
With a production the size of Cats, you might think
the crew includes a make-up designer on the tour. According
to Stuart Ramsay, it's a common misconception:
"People are often really shocked to find we
don't have a make-up designer on the tour. We do all our own make-up.
"It used to take me around four hours to do
my make-up, as I'd never done anything like it before.
"It's face painting, it's about perspective,
working out where things go on your face but it's not a natural
thing, your making your face look as close to a cat a possible,"
he said.
After weeks of performances both Stuart and Matthew
now have putting their make-up on down to a respectable 20 minutes.
"We use a powder on top of the make-up to
seal it to our skin," said Matthew. "That
way, we can sweat and sweat, but the make-up pretty much stays there.
"Shaving can be a pain. As there is so much
white in Munkustrap's design, I do have to shave everyday before
the show.
"That's probably the worst thing, having to
shave and then putting the make-up straight on top. I look forward
to Sundays - I don't even go near a razor or a mirror. [laughs]
Matthew admits that becoming a cat wasn't the easiest
thing in the world.
"I do a lot of the
narration in the show. I'm a singer, not a dancer - so taking on
the cat like attitude was probably the most difficult thing to learn.
"Walking around stage in a leotard and acting
like a cat was really difficult for me to do. In rehearsals we'd
have an afternoon of cat work to try things out and see how successful
they were," he said.
When it comes to dealing with the press, Stuart
Ramsay said, he has to watch what he suggest about his character
Rum Tum Tugger.
"I said as a joke once during a newspaper
interview 'I'm the Robbie Williams of the feline world' and they
quoted it right across the front of the paper! Oh no. [laughs]
"We do have to be careful what we say,"
he added.
"I sometimes want to bring up the fact we
can lick our own genitals, but on a radio show at three in the afternoon
it's probably not the best thing to say!" [laughs]
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