When “Cats” left Broadway in 2000 after an 18-year run, many New York City theatergoers breathed a sigh of relief. The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical and international sensation, which existed in an uncanny valley of feline behavior, garnered equal amounts of praise and ridicule.
But now the production is back, and bigger than ever. A reimagined version of the show, called “The Jellicle Ball,” debuted downtown this summer, and repeatedly sold out performances. Its run was extended for a third time this week.
The show takes all the songs from the original production, but sets the characters in the ballroom scene that had swept New York in the 1980s, when the original musical debuted.
At the center of the production is Broadway legend André De Shields, whose career in the New York Theater scene spans both the production of “Cats” and the construction of the World Trade Center, where “The Jellicle Ball” is staged.
De Shields made his Broadway debut in 1973, and two years later he starred as the titular character in the original Broadway production of “The Wiz.” He has since had featured roles in “Hair,” and “Hadestown,” which earned him a Tony Award (he also has a Grammy and an Emmy to his name).
De Shields joined Gothamist for an interview outside the Ambassador Theatre in Midtown, where he made his Broadway debut back in the short-lived production of “Warp!”
Like his character in “The Jellicle Ball,” De Shields’ is an elder statesman of the city’s theater scene and a queer icon. He’s a long-term HIV survivor and an advocate for people living with AIDS and HIV.
During a wide-ranging conversation, he discussed his staying power on Broadway, what “The Jellicle Ball” gets right and why the future is female. An edited version of that conversation is below.
You’ve won an Emmy, a Tony and a Grammy. It’s hard for most people to make it in this city, much less have a sustained career in this town. Why do you think you’ve been able to do it?
There are two fundamental reasons that have prepared me for persisting in the theater industry in New York.
One of them is that I come from a family of 11 children. It was very much like growing up in my own United Nations. There were many different versions of how to live. So there were many examples around me that I had a blueprint that I could say, “If I want to end up like that, then I shouldn’t do this.”
The second reason for my being able to persist in New York has to do with growing up in Baltimore. Baltimore is a very tough city. The combination of the family and the city provided me with what I call “radical courage” so that you don’t back down in the face of problems or burdens. And you don’t call on God to move the mountain. You say, “I’ll find my way around it.” And it works.
We’re standing in front of the Ambassador Theatre on West 49th Street. Why is this theater relevant to you?
I came to New York as a professional artist in 1973, and my Broadway debut, in a show called “Warp,” was at the Ambassador Theatre.
I had shaved my head and I had attached an 18-inch warlock. When I arrived in New York, walking the streets, people would look at me and cross to the other side. And I thought, “Wait a minute, isn’t this New York, the citadel of self expression?”
We opened on Valentine’s Day and then closed a week later. We were summarily dismissed by the New York critics.
It was a glorious failure, but it was also a great teaching lesson for the entire group. We did everything as a family. So, when the family decided that they’d been burned by New York and It was best to return to Chicago, I was the one who said, “I’m going to stay here.”
I didn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of, but I knew this is where ultimately I needed to be. I had friends who were here working in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Jesus Christ Superstar.” I would keep the cat for them, wash the dishes, run errands, and then I could sleep on their couch. That was the winter of ‘73. And a year later I was rehearsing “The Wiz,” 50 years ago.
How do you think Broadway has changed over the years?
The first Broadway show in which I achieved national attention was “The Wiz.” Not so much because of the decision that I had made two years earlier to remain here as it was demanded by the intersection of history and evolution. Broadway — if not the last, one of the few remaining bastions of bias — had to change, and to show it was not oly for white audiences.
When a few Black audiences came to Broadway, which had been theretofore inhospitable terrain for Black audiences and Black performers, the word of mouth was more powerful than any bias. And persists today as the most powerful, effective promotional tool. Have someone tell someone else, “You have got to see this show!”
It was that kind of grassroots enthusiasm for “The Wiz” that changed its path. We opened on Jan. 5, 1975. And by June of that same year, we had won seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical.
Your role in “The Jellicle Ball” as Old Deuteronomy is an elder statesman of the cats of sorts. Do you see any symmetry between your role in the play and you as an actor?
I see more than symmetry. I see destiny. I want to give credence to this idea of radical courage. Because there is so much in the world to discourage one. There is a consistency in the roles that I have chosen and that have chosen me.
Did it take “radical courage” to join this production of “Cats,” which ran for a long time, often to a point of ridicule?
That’s because there was no one there taking on the role that I’m now doing as Old Deuteronomy in “The Jellicle Ball.” Deuteronomy has two songs in “Cats”: “The Moments of Happiness” and “The Ad-Dressing of the Cats.” In those two songs, you find the philosophical treatise of what “Cats” is. But it didn’t get that kind of treatment in the original production in the ‘80s because there were so many whiskers and fur and tails and cute makeup and that sort of thing.
There was still a brilliant score and there was still brilliant poetry by T. S. Eliot, but you were so busy having your eyes dazzled that you didn’t take on the cerebral connotations of what the show is.
“The Jellicle Ball” certainly dazzles the eye. But do you think it accomplishes what “Cats” couldn’t, or at least will make people understand “Cats”?
Yes, and there are spontaneous responses during the show. For instance, just the other night, when Deuteronomy gets arrested, there was a group of people sitting at the cabaret table and one of them said, “I love the story,” because the second person said, “Yes, it’s about Stonewall.”
It’s not about Stonewall. But if that’s what you get from the arrest of Deuteronomy, when the police come in and shut down the ball, yeah, then that’s exactly what it’s about. The community coalesces and revotes, and then changes the history that has yet to happen.
You were around the whole ballroom scene that inspired this show in the ‘70s and ‘80s when it was booming. How much of this show is personal to you?
The phenomenon of transgender life has been personal to me since I was a babe, which is why many of us in the community are attracted to mythologies because everything is possible in mythologies. You can have a god with 12 arms. You can have a god who’s female during the day and male during the night. As a matter of fact, the greatest oracle in the history of literature, Tiresias, lived half his life as a woman and half his life as a man. Which is why he had the ability to see into the future.
The lesson is: surrender to your destiny and everything will be alright. When you go to see “The Jellicle Ball,” you are in the company of people who have surrendered to their destinies. And they are alright with who they are. It’s the people who come to see that who have to either adjust their point of view, or agree.
The future paradigm is femininity. That’s what people are screaming about when they see “The Jellicle Ball.” Because everyone’s like this, “Ah! B—-! Ah!” This is what’s taking over the world? Yes, darling. This is what’s going to rule for the next 2,000 years.
So get your t–s in order. And get a fan.
Old Deuteronomy introduces himself to the audience by singing “My legs may be tottering, I must go slow.” Do you feel like you must go slow? Is your career anywhere close to burning out?
I don’t rush. Slowly is the fastest way to get to where you want to be. Old Deuteronomy says, “my legs may be tottering,” but that’s all they’ve said about Deuteronomy from the beginning of the show.
He’s old, he’s lived nine lives, maybe 99 lives. He is the DNA parent of all the other cats that you are meeting tonight. And we come together this one night of the year and choose the one cat who deserves to be elevated to the Heaviside Layer, because that cat has used up all its lives.
But if that cat is chosen, he gets another life. And that’s what everybody wants. Another chance.
So Deuteronomy says, “Yes, I’m old, but I’m not dead. I am your version of Methuselah, The oldest man in history, 969 years Methuselah lived.”
What other symmetry do you see between this role and the rest of your career?
I’m a walking library and what’s important to the characters I play is literacy, being a wordsmith. The audience can enjoy what’s dazzling your eyes, but if you ever need something to be explained, look my way, and I won’t distract. I’ll be here when you’re ready to go.
What we are attempting is to have you understand the show through the lens of femininity.
They need to come away from that. And maybe they do, all on their own. But they need to come away from that experience saying, “It’s my time. It’s my time.” And you see it in the audience, and you see it in the staff at the theater.
And I’m still working on the pronouns. Because that’s what we do now, but I love it. It’s confusing in one sense because are he and she and they. When it comes to me, I say my name is André De Shields and my pronouns are: King, Legend, Icon, and Broadway Deity.