CAMP as Christmas and with almost as many fairy lights, Cats tumbled into the Empire last night and settled into its three-week run with all the chutzpah of a real feline stealing your spot on the couch the moment you move.

I accepted the mission of reviewing this show with the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia firmly on, having first seen it when my age was probably still in single figures. As I totted up just how long ago that might have been, I suddenly got more of a feeling for what the washed-up, knackered old character who belts out Memory might have been going on about.

But any self-pity was quickly cast aside, because this production is probably the most fun anyone could ever have dressed in an 80s frightwig and skintight cat outfit (I can’t be alone in wondering if anybody has ever thought of dragging the Toyah-esque costumes into the 21st Century).

The kind of feelgood show that makes you think you might even have the secret ability to high-kick like the professionals and dance another day instead of ending up in traction. Pure silly brilliance. Every member of the cast is adorable. The Rum Tum Tugger has a Frank ‘N’ Furter raunch that fortunately passed me by as a wee girl; thieving Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer go down a storm despite their grating Cock-er-nee accents (at least they weren’t Scousers); and Grizabella brings the house down, to use a cliché, with a lusty, regret-soaked Memory.

The ensemble numbers are particularly good too, like the battle of the pekes and the pollicles and Skimbleshanks, involving as they do plenty of imaginative and cunningly-stored props and mind-boggling co-ordination among the players. The Cats make plenty of use of the whole theatre and regularly run amok in the audience or watch from the boxes,

I always saw Cats as one of those curiosities that if aliens were to come down to try and understand us, it would make the human race thor- oughly incomp- rehensible, but last night I was sold.

vickyanderson