Cats Talk Back
January 18-29, 2022
Written By: Bess Wohl
Cats Talk Back is an engrossing mock-docu-comedy by award-winning New York playwright Bess Wohl, in which several actors who supposedly spent a good part of their lives performing in one of Broadway's longest-running musicals reminisce about their experiences as felines on stage. There are a few surprises, however, so be ready!
FUNNY AND POIGNANT CATS TALK BACK OPENS THE RED BARN’S 42nd SEASON
It’s been a long dry spell thanks to the pandemic, but theater is finally back in Key West! And the Red Barn will open its new season with a special show you won’t want to miss.
Critics call it “a winner…funny, poignant, and observant…” (Backstage) and “…a bubbly, easy-going treat of theatre…” (Time Out). You’ll call it wonderful.
What you’ll be watching is Cats Talk Back, the critically-acclaimed mock-docu-comedy by New York’s celebrated young playwright, Bess Wohl, which opens the Red Barn Theatre’s stellar 42nd season of bright and brilliant comedies.
The play will be presented outdoors under the stars in the Red Barn’s expansive courtyard, and run January 18th through January 29, 2022. All curtains are at 8 pm.
The magic of the play’s unique concept – a talk-back session with several former cast members of Cats, one of the most successful musicals in Broadway history – lies in its realism. That realism is effected through the panel discussion’s moderator, a respected member of the theatrical community…in this case, Murphy Davis, one of Key West’s best known theater directors. The use of Davis as the facilitator of the on-stage discussion blurs the lines of fiction and reality. Are these really Cats actors, or actors playing those actors?
The panelists are ostensibly all former members of the Cats production, which ran for 18 years and 7845 performances. But during the play, we learn that the musical’s success was not always these actors’ success. There’s Monique, who survived the full 18 years, but had her dancing career stalled because of it. There’s Bonnie, whose hunger for approval was squashed when the show closed right after she joined the cast. There’s Steven, an actor’s actor, and Hector, the quintessential egocentric, boastful actor who still manages to be charismatic.
Cats Talk Back never lets the audience know for sure what they’re watching. As the evening progresses, there are moments of human connection and expressed friendship, but also moments that indicate cast in-fighting and tensions. And then suddenly one or more of the “cats” will break into acapella renditions of Cats songs, trying once again to find their inner jellicle cat.
Cats Talk Back stars Michael Mulligan, Marjorie Paul Shook, Nicole Nurenburg, Rhett Kalman, and Davis. It is directed by the Red Barn’s Artistic Director, Joy Hawkins. The show is sponsored by the Smith Law Firm, the Florida Department of State Division of Arts and Culture, and the Monroe County Tourist Development Council.
Tickets are available at redbarntheatre.com or at the theater’s box office, 305-296-9911.
A Message from the writer, Bess Wohl
“I am so deeply moved and honored that it is being revisited again, and finding new life in Key West.”
“CATS TALK BACK is my first play. I wrote it while I was an acting student at the Yale School of Drama, and it was originally performed at a small, student-run space called the Yale Cabaret. Each role was tailored specifically to one of my classmates and the play itself was a love letter to theatre, actors, and the community we build together. We promoted the play as if it was entirely real, and many non-Yale people who came to see the show thought that the actors in it were actually the real performers from Cats. It all felt like a giant trick, a joyful prank-- which I now realize is how I think about most theatre, no matter the form. When I sat in the audience of Cats Talk Back for the very first time in front of a raucous, late night crowd it was a terrifying, thrilling watershed moment in my life. I had never before sat in an audience to watch actors say text I had written. I had never seen a crowd respond to my words onstage before-- and the responses were wild. I remember vividly the moment, sitting there, when I knew that playwriting was my future path. CATS TALK BACK went on to be performed at the NY International Fringe Festival to sold-out performances and won the Fringe award for Best Overall Production. For me, the play is, at its heart, about the difficulty of recapturing our peak moments in life, the moments that become memory. Years after writing the play, when we were performing it yet again at a Fringe reunion benefit, I realized that the experience of creating the play was now one of those peak past moments, something we all miss deeply but can never recapture. In the end, the play became the very thing that I was writing about. I am so deeply moved and honored that it is being revisited again, and finding new life in Key West.
With gratitude, Bess”