Bombalurina is an elegant, athletic cat, inspired by a Bengali breed cat. I had a Bengali cat, so I know how they are – I’m crazy. Great cats, but with a crazy note. It is, in a way, one of the bad cats.
In my mind, cats in this musical fall into one of two categories: either good cats or bad cats. There are good cats: Mr. Mistoffelees, Munkustrap, Victoria, Deuteronomy, Jennyanydots. There are also bad cats: Macavity, Griddlebone, Rumpleteazer, Mungojerrie, and Bombalurina. Macavity is the worst of them, the equivalent of a mobster: we take everything we want, do not obey any law, lie, deceive and get along, and Bombalurina is a kind of Macavity’s right hand.
Andrew Lloyd Weber’s music has so much impact because it is simply thrilling, in a bold way. The emotion is in the foreground of the soundtrack. And this is the trick that made his music go beyond time – dominated by emotion. Macavity is at the center of the song because it is so naughty and sometimes ironic. It’s funny to describe a cat, one who thinks himself a great mob boss.
Everyone knows how cats do: at night, they do chaos. Macavity’s song is one that is a pleasure to sing and dance to and will be at the center of the musical, with countless dancers, because it is an essential part of the Broadway show and the entire movie. I think when you have so many dancers coming together from so many different styles of dance, it’s such a pleasant environment because some are singers who learned to play in the movie, dancers who learned to play and sing, people who came from all corners of the entertainment industry and who have tried and improvised many things, and when you have things from so many places it is very interesting to be there.
The “cat school” is unique: the cat movements are studied there. It’s interesting to know how they maintain their posture, how they feel, the cat’s anatomy that suggests how a man can get into that spirit, and it’s so enjoyable to go to cat school.
