Moscow Cat Theater December 3, 2006

They say that when Donizetti’s Lucia Di Lamermoor was performed for the first time the audience wept in the face of the genius. Admirers of Scriabin fell to their knees after hearing his compositions. When the great Lillian Russell sang “Only a Bird in a Golden Cage” hard-bitten miners and roughnecks were overcome and had to be returned to consciousness with smelling salts. Going back to the Greek theatricals of Aristophanes or the Elizabethan masterpieces of William Shakespeare audiences have become emotionally supercharged by great performances. I would say that the works of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill or the musicals of Rogers and Hammerstein might transcend earth-bound emotion and inspire a crowd to an otherworldly ecstasy.
In my six decades on this sweet swinging sphere I have seen the best of drama, the heights of musical performance, and have visited several of the planet’s great art museums. Yet, until Sunday I had seen nothing, heard nothing, felt only the most tepid of stirrings in my breast. For, on Sunday, December 3 in the year of our lord 2006 I saw the Moscow Cat Theater and my life and my soul will never, ever be the same. With my emotions aflame, my eyes riveted and my mouth agape I saw miracles occur, angels with fur fly in the charged atmosphere of the Wilshire Ebell Theater glittering footlights. My spirit was cleansed, jolted and purified by feats unseen, unheard of on old Mother earth since man was domesticated by our pointy-eared masters known as cats. These tiny gods and goddesses master a human known as Yuri Kuklachev, who as their beast of burden performs as foil to their acrobatic elegance, their athletic prowess, their defiance of gravity and their witty comedic genius. So many of the felines showed genius that it is difficult to single out one or two but there was one inky actor who literally stole the heart of the assembled and demonstrated his superiority over all mere humans. They darted hither and thither, blurring the line between reality and fantasy. The vaulted into the unknown with elegant fare thee wells. They appeared and reappeared unexpectedly like the magical sprites that we know and worship in our own humdrum human lives. My partner in this performance was a lady, enslaved most willingly but her face was a mask of wonder, inspiration and admiration for this achingly beautiful commedia de la meow. She gasped, she sobbed, she bravely howled bravo! with every part of her human fiber. We touched the whiskers of Bastet, we rode a magic carpet of cat fur, we ate from the crunchie bowl of ancient Thebes' ratters. Bless them every one! The noble cats gave us a template for sophisticated achievement in the entertainment arts and once more lived up to their place as God’s most purrfect creatures. I saw it but can hardly believe the leger-fel-mane that transpired on the old stage. I don’t think we will pass this way again but now I am prepared to take my place on Rainbow bridge as I have been to the mountaintop, have looked into the face of perfection and can die happy once and for all.