Thanks for the memories, Todd. You’re still the Cats meow
Performing in Cats was an early career highlight for Todd McKenney, who’s back prowling the stage in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s classic musical.
It’s a full circle moment for Todd McKenney, who’s returning to QPAC for the 40th anniversary tour of Cats.
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s record-breaking musical plays the Lyric Theatre for two weeks from February 6.
McKenney fondly recalls playing one of the pivotal roles in Cats early in his stage career, so pulling the Lycra back on decades later, playing dual roles, has made him a tad sentimental.
“I loved the show and I just wanted to revisit it after 37 years in a slightly different capacity,” says McKenney, 60, who’ll perform alongside theatre greats Lucy Maunder and Mark Vincent, as well as other talented performers.
“The first time I was the acrobatic youngest – Tumble Brutus was my cat’s name. And now I’m the oldest person in the show and my character is the oldest character in the show. I play a little old man shuffling along, which is kind of cute.
(Gus is) a beautiful old guy who’s reminiscing about his life at the theatre. So, it’s quite poignant
“My first role in this show, Bustopher Jones – the aristocratic cat – gets a short song, but a big sing. My second act, Gus (Asparagus) the Theatre Cat, he’s kind of talk-singing – it’s real character-based singing. He’s a beautiful old guy who’s reminiscing about his life at the theatre. So, it’s quite poignant for me, too.”
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McKenney is one of Australia’s most versatile performing artists – whether it’s the outspoken judge on the TV show Dancing With the Stars or as an actor and leading man of song and dance seen most recently as The Wizard in Wicked and Felix Unger in The Odd Couple.
Theatre buffs would fondly recall his performance as Peter Allen in more than 1000 shows of the national tour of The Boy From Oz. This summer he has moonlighted as an ABC Radio host.
In many ways, Cats is not too far from his earliest dancing days, starting at the age of three at his mother’s dance school in Perth.
“I’m always very aware that my childhood hobby became my career, which I think is just lucky,” he says. “I just always knew what I wanted to do. I started getting paid for my hobby, basically.”
And, after 42 years, the love for performing is still there as he reconnects with that little Todd every now and then to remember what it was like.
“Stepping on a stage in front of a full audience of 2000 people, it scares the daylights out of a lot of people but, for me, it just feels like home,” he says. “I know how to work a crowd and, yeah, I absolutely love it. I’ve never lost the passion for it.”
And it shows. Reviews from earlier legs of the 40th anniversary Cats tour have praised McKenney for having “the audience in his paw thanks to his comic timing”, according to one review.
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He gives full credit to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s timeless score and feels privileged that he has been performing long enough to see himself in the show’s story.
“It’s great that I’ve transitioned from having to do the dance stuff to more serious character stuff,” he says. “I really care that (my character) has some weight and that he pulls at people’s heartstrings in among a whole lot of razzamatazz.
“My part is the only time in the show where it kind of just stops and this character just tells his story. I take it very seriously that it lands and people care about him.”
McKenney says there are many overlapping aspects that keep audiences returning to Cats, from T. S. Eliot’s poetry which Lloyd Webber set to music to the range of feline characters.
“There’s another layer to it as well, which is nostalgia,” he says. “When it was first staged decades ago it was the show that everybody had to see because it was so ground-breaking.
“A lot of people went to see their first musical theatre show and it was Cats because it was the first mega musical and everybody just had to see it. A lot of people who cut their musical theatre teeth by seeing Cats are bringing their kids back to see it.
“It’s a fast-moving show and it’s a great-looking show. And it is still unique in the fact that these people are trying to convince you that they’re cats. There’s nothing else like it in the musical theatre landscape. And that’s why it works. It’s different.”
McKenney says he’s looking forward to seeing his mum in the audience and catching up with her where she lives on the Gold Coast.
“It’s two short, sharp weeks and it’s almost sold out – it’s been accepted so well,” he says. “It’s going to be a lovely way to finish a really great tour.”
Cats plays the Lyric Theatre, QPAC, February 6-22.
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