The Broadway Theatre Review: Two downtown sensations take Broadway by storm
By Ross
“Hello, kittens,” is the greeting that started my two-show Saturday, and I knew from that first moment I was in for something beyond special. I was being gifted with the chance of seeing Cats: The Jellicle Ball in the afternoon and Titanique that evening. And the moment I stepped into the ballroom that is the Broadhurst, and saw the disco ball cat head rotating on all those screens around me, I could hardly contain my excitement. In one theatre, the kitty cat disco ball seemed to promise charisma and divine delight. In another, it was the iconic heart-shaped diamond of the Ocean spinning slowly overhead as if Céline Dion herself had personally decided we should all bow down to its glory. Nothing was subtle in these arrivals. They were royal announcements of the highest order. Their Broadway was not interested in traditional restraint.
I was “crazy kooky” with cat curiosity, to see if Cats: The Jellicle Ball and Titaníque could hold onto their downtown magic under the pressure and pomp of a Broadway house. As well as the higher expectations placed on them. Oh, Mary! had done the uptown crawl to acclaim last season, so my hopes were as high and solid as an iceberg. What has happened, thankfully, is something far more satisfying. Neither show has adjusted itself to Broadway. Broadway has adjusted to them.
Cats: The Jellicle Ball begins like a party that already knows it is going to be legendary. The DJ (Ken Ard) flips through records with intention, Beyoncé, Diana Ross, icons laid out like offerings, until that album appears. The one with the eyes. The reaction is immediate and completely earned. The room shifts. The past is not being referenced. It is being claimed.
When those eyes multiply across the space and the cast arrives, proud, prancing, fully in command, the show locks into something electric. As directed by Zhailon Levingston (Broadway’s Chicken and Biscuits) and Bill Rauch (LCT’s The Great Society), this is not the Cats that once ran forever and somehow became the punchline to its own success. This is Cats reborn through ballroom culture, and the transformation is not cosmetic. It is structural, emotional, historical, and communal.
The dancing is astonishing. Not just in technique, though that is undeniable, but in presence, thanks to the superb choreography of Arturo Lyons (Madonna’s Celebration Tour) and Omari Wiles (Les Ballet Afrik). Each performer carries a story, a stance, a reason for being there. The ballroom framework does not just hold the show together. It gives it purpose. It turns introduction into competition, performance into identity, and the entire evening into something that feels shared rather than observed. And then something unexpected happens. It becomes emotional.
Old Deuteronomy’s entrance lands with the full weight of ceremony and expectation. André De Shields (Broadway’s Hadestown) and this version of the role feel inseparable, as if the production has been waiting for him to take that throne all along. There is no question of authority once he arrives. “All rise,” we are told, and we do, not out of obligation, but because this is ballroom royalty in its purest form. The moment stretches, the note holds, and the celebration feels earned, not just for the character, but for the legacy he carries with him.
Every time Grizabella (’Tempress’ Chasity Moor) and her story surface, the room’s temperature changes. As Demeter (Bebe Nicole Simpson) and Bombalurina (Garnet Williams) introduce us to her state of being, something tightens in our collective heart, and when she finally steps forward, the lump-in-our-throat reaction is immediate and profound. The performance itself may not reach the mythical heights that memory insists upon, but the moment lands because the context finally gives it weight. You feel it, whether you want to or not.
Yet, there are imperfections in this Ballroom. The Broadhurst staging feels tighter and more chaotic than its previous incarnation at PAC, occasionally compressing movement and spectacle that once had more room to breathe. Yet, the ballroom competition itself delivers a parade of unforgettable turns. Sydney James Harcourt’s Rum Tum Tugger is undeniably magnetic, commanding attention with a confidence that borders on excess, though the repetition of that spotlight begins to feel like a choice worth questioning. Leiomy’s Macavity storms the stage in full designer rebellion, a presence that refuses to be ignored, while Junior LaBeija’s Gus offers something far more tender, grounding the spectacle in lived experience and memory. But it is Robert “Silk” Mason’s Magical Mister Mistoffelees who ultimately gathers the evening together, stretching movement into something transcendent, a performance that feels both technically astonishing and emotionally complete.
The production’s visual and cultural framing is where it fully reveals its ambition. Designed with runway precision by Rachel Hauck (Broadway’s Hadestown), the stage becomes a competitive ballroom space that feels both celebratory and historical. Dropping dead out on a long runway space running from the front row to the judges’ table, the newly formed megamusical delivers its mega reframing with an African-American and Latino underground LGBTQ+ subcultural slant, rolled out with pride and self-assurance. Lighting by Adam Honoré (Broadway’s Ragtime) and sound by Kai Harada (Broadway’s The Band’s Visit) shape the environment with clarity and pulse, while projections by Brittany Bland ground the evening in the lived history of ballroom culture, its triumphs, its losses, and the generations that carried it forward.
That history lands with surprising force. The retooling has nothing to do with the four-legged feline. These ‘cats’ are performative alter-ego contestants; magnificent and creative, competing in a captivating, integrated competition that has its historic soul coming from drag balls of the mid-19th Century. And those balls, in response to increasing racism and homophobia, evolved in the 20th Century into house Ballroom Competitions, where Black and Latino participants would ‘walk’ the runway in a variety of categories, resulting in the awarding of trophies and cash prizes. The framework is perfection for these personality introductions, and these ‘cats’ are ready to revel and death-drop dip into these historic roots like no one could have ever imagined possible. Watching the projected lineage of Houses, the arrests, the resistance, I found myself in awe, but I also couldn’t help but think back to the first time I saw Cats at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto in 1985, when the show felt like a cultural revelation simply for existing. This version finds that same sense of breakthrough, but in a completely different and mind-blowing language. What was once a global megamusical has been reframed through a culture that understands resistance and performance as identity, and in doing so, it finally finds a deeper purpose.
Across town at the St. James Theatre, another downtown sensation has dropped anchor on Broadway. Titaníque, as directed by co-creator Tye Blue, is doing something entirely different and somehow exactly the same. The scale is bigger, the jokes are louder, and the commitment to absurdity is absolute. That sparkling diamond is hanging at the center, but it’s the irrelevance that is the soul of this cult sensation downtown, and that hit has now expanded into a full Broadway spectacle that still feels like it might fall apart at any moment, except it never does.
Marla Mindelle (A Kidman Carol) is still in full command, slipping into Céline Dion with a confidence that suggests she has no intention of ever giving the role back. Co-creator Constantine Rousouli (The Big Gay Jamboree) matches her with equal energy, while the unsinkable Deborah Cox (Broadway’s The Wiz) arrives and simply takes over the room, her voice and persona doing most of the work and doing it gloriously. Jim Parsons (Broadway’s Our Town) knows exactly what show he is in and plays it with a wild and ridiculous looseness that keeps everything hilariously just on the edge of collapse.
The staging leans fully into its own ridiculous logic. Designed by Gabriel Hainer Evansohn and Grace Laubacher for Iron Bloom (KPOP, Sweeney Todd at Barrow Street), the world feels intentionally theatrical in a way that mirrors the show’s sense of parody. Lighting by Paige Seber (The Flea’s Good Friday) and sound by Lawrence Schober (Prospect Theatre’s American Morning) heighten the chaos without losing clarity, while the orchestrations and arrangements by Nicholas James Connell keep the musical foundation tight even as everything else spins outward. The result is a show that looks like it might fall apart, but never actually does, held together by performers who understand exactly how far to push the joke.
Watching Mindelle weave herself into every scene, I kept thinking back to a party I once attended in Hollywood, hosted by Debbie Reynolds, where no one was allowed to hold the spotlight alone for too long. Every song became a duet, whether it needed to or not. That same joyful intrusion lives here, as Céline refuses to stay on the sidelines, reshaping every moment into something that belongs to her. Just ask Rose and Jack.
Rousouli, in the best and tightest pants, courtesy of costume designer Alejo Vietti (Broadway’s Holiday Inn), gives us a butt-tastic, hilarious, and handsome Jack, alongside an incredibly voiced and very funny Melissa Barrera (Peacock’s “The Copenhagen Test“) as Rose Dewitt Bukater, “just a quirky little ingénue trying to find her way“, both delivering the goods time and time again. They are a dream team of hilarity, finding the ridiculous in every sketch and floating door they can strap on.
The jokes come fast and without mercy. The cast breaks, recovers, breaks again, and the audience is fully along for the ride. There are moments where the energy could be shaped more carefully, where restraint might sharpen the impact, but restraint is not really the point here. The show is committed to the bit, and the bit keeps working.
What makes Titaníque land so consistently is its control beneath the chaos. Every joke feels thrown, but never lost. Every musical moment is heightened, but never sloppy. The show understands exactly how far it can push before pulling itself back, and that precision is what keeps the absurdity from collapsing under its own weight.
What connects these two productions is not their material, but their attitude. Neither show is interested in playing by the rules that once defined them. One takes an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that had become a cultural artifact and turns it into something alive again. The other takes a cultural artifact and gleefully tears it apart in front of us. Both succeed gloriously because they trust their audiences to meet them where they are.
What stays is that feeling of being in a room where something beyond special is happening in real time. Not just on stage, but across the entire sparkling room. The shimmer of a disco ball, the flash of a diamond, the sound of a room laughing at the same moment. These shows do not ask for permission. They take up space, they make noise, and they trust that we will come with them. And we do. Joyfully.
