Sue Sergi was sitting around a table with people she knew, reviewing the three years she spent running a new performing arts center.
Nothing beat seeing “Cats” take shape in the hours before a performance, said Sergi, who retired in July as CEO of the Clay Center for the Arts & Sciences.
“These young, buff people go into the dressing room and they come out cats,” Sergi recalled. “They lick their paws, they scratch their heads, they perch up on things, they stretch. I’m used to seeing dancers stretch before they go on, but these dancers stretch the way cats stretch.”
That’s an important part of the show that the director, who acted in the Broadway production, stresses, said Chris Sidoli, who plays Gus, Growltiger and Bustopher Jones when a touring production of “Cats” stops at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday at the Clay Center.
“When we started our rehearsals, we worked on our felinity,” Sidoli said. “We learned how a cat reacts to things, how it smells, how it walks. He taught if we don’t believe in it, then the audience won’t.”
Cast members spend two hours a night preparing themselves, including 45 minutes to put on makeup and 15 minutes to put on the costume and wig, Sidoli said. Once the show begins, he changes costumes three times. “Whenever I’m off stage, I’m changing costumes or changing makeup.”
Sidoli, 27, took an odd route to this dance-intensive show, having ignored dance in high school, then majoring in opera at Skidmore College. “I was always the kid who sang,” he said. “I sang in all the choirs. I sang in musicals in high school. I never imagined being in ‘Cats’ because of the dancing, but there are two operatic roles for a male and my female counterpart, Grittlebone.”
The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical dramatizes poet T.S. Eliot’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.” Audiences embraced it more enthusiastically than critics, giving the Broadway production the longest run ever, 7,485 performances over 18 years. It is a show so out of the mainstream — not much plot, for instance — that many people seem to like it better the second time than the first.
The show includes Webber’s most famous song, the showstopper “Memory,” often incorrectly referred to as “Memories.” Grittlebone sings that.
The troupe for this Broadway in Charleston show has 29 actors, 20 of whom go on stage any single night, Sidoli said. Performers need nights off to rest and recover from injuries, he added.
To contact staff writer Bob Schwarz, use e-mail or call 348-1249.
If you go
“Cats,” 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday. Clay Center Tickets, $41.50 and $60.50. Call 561-3570 or visit www.theclaycenter.org. The first 50 children under the age of 14 with a valid ticket can get their faces painted by cast members both Tuesday and Wednesday. All interested children and their families should arrive at the Clay Center lobby at 6:30 p.m.