"Cynical Cats, Rabbinical Cats..."

[psalm_onethirtyone]

All right, so I've got some questions about my CATS CD. I managed to get one in English, and it's the OBC recording.

Firstly, in Mungojerrie and Rumpleteaser, in Japanese it's a duet between a woman and a man. And it's like that in the concert version, too. But on the CD it's two men singing, and I'm not absolutely certain, but reasonably so, that it's Mister Mistoffolees' actor singing the part of Rumpleteaser.

(By the way, Mistoffolees = SQUEE*giggle*eeee!^_^)

Secondly--nevermind, there isn't a secondly. Terrence Mann sings the Rum Tum Tugger. *melts slowly*

Also, Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat is so close to being the bestest song ever.

...Grizabella is Jefferson's CD Wife, isn't she? lillieoz, didn't you say that? She sounds just like her.

Oh! Second question: Can anyone tell me which material is TS Eliot's and which is Trevor Nunn's? I can't tell.

Comments

[bewareofitalics]

Terrence Mann as the Rum Tum Tugger is the reason I got into Les Mis in the first place. I realized that he'd been Javert, and therefore stopped resisting when my friend tried to make me listen to Les Mis. *g*

I think Mistoffolees sings "Mungojerrie and Rumpleteaser" alone, and Mungojerrie and Rumpleteaser acted out the song. That eventually changed to Mungo and Rumple singing and dancing their own song, not sure when.

I too love Skimbleshanks! And he gets the best names in other languages - he's "Edgar" in French, and in some other language (I forget if it's Hungarian or German) he's "Elvis."

And yep, Grizabella is Betty Buckley, who was also Martha Jefferson.

Most of the show is T. S. Eliot. The Grizabella story came from unpublished fragments, I think, and for "Memory" and "Grizabella the Glamour Cat" Trevor Nunn used lines from "Rhapsody on a Windy Night." I'm not sure what happened with "Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats." On the DVD you can hear Andrew Lloyd Webber singing the poem it was based on, which was about "The Man in White Spats" talking about Pollicles and Jellicles. I think the "There's a man over there..." bit comes from that poem. And I guess Trevor Nunn wrote the Pollicles out of the song. Or something. Lot of help I am. :)

[rainbowjehan.livejournal.com]

I think Mistoffolees sings "Mungojerrie and Rumpleteaser" alone

Are you serious? Well. O_o That would explain why I thought he was in it. Okay.

And he gets the best names in other languages - he's "Edgar" in French and in some other language (I forget if it's Hungarian or German) he's "Elvis".

Good God. He's just Skimbulu in Japanese. Waen is other there somewhere sputtering indignantly over "Elvis".

What do you mean, "lot of help I am"? You know way more about this than I do. *hoards all the information* Silly girl. *poke*

[bewareofitalics]

I just checked catsmusical.com, which has a question about the various versions of "Mungojerrie and Rumpleteaser" on the FAQ. It says this: "The characters were changed entirely. They were stipped of the song--Misto sang it and the characters did a pantomine dance. In fact, the characters didn't truely appear in the show--Coricopat and Etcetera appeared in clown costumes as the duo. This version was part of a play put on to "entertain" Bustopher Jones.

The Broadway version lasted in this manner until the fall of 1987 when the show was rehashed. They renamed the characters of Carbucketty and Etcetera to be Mungojerry and Rumpleteazer and they used the Viennese staging of the song. The reason given for this change was usually that they were updating the Broadway show to match the national tour and they wanted to make the role of Misto less strenous. One could also conjecture that they were also having a problem finding a ballet dancer who could sing well enough for the role of Misto."

So there's that. *g*

And I checked my tapes - it is in Hungarian that Skimble is "Elvisz Tren," pronounced "Elvis Treen." That's the recording that renamed Macavity "Sam Mitcegel." And "Jellicle" became "Karminica," pronounced (as far as I can tell) "Kamnita." I do so love the Hungarian recording...

[rainbowjehan.livejournal.com]

Er... wow. O_O This show got changed around almost as much as--damn, I can't think of any other shows that were changed as much.

Sam Mitcegel. I like that. *g*

[bewareofitalics]

Yeah, most shows get their changes done before they have major productions. *g* The original London production was really different from how the show ended up - different "Mungojerrie and Rumpleteaser" tune (which was also used in Hungary), Misto singing most of Munkustrap's songs, "The Ballad of Billy McCaw" instead of the opera thing in "Growltiger's Last Stand," etc. And veeeery different costumes - most people didn't even have wigs, they just made cat ears with their hair. And then there were all of the productions in other countries... I think it was Sweden that made the setting an attic instead of a junkyard.

[rainbowjehan.livejournal.com]

OI.

Although the attic sounds cool.

[theatre-angel.livejournal.com]

...I always thought it was only Munkojerrie singing "Munkojerrie and Rumpelteazer". O_o

Trevor wrote a few lyrics to the opening number and bits of other songs, I believe. "Memory" is actually taken from some poem of Eliot's, which I can't quite remember the name of now.

Seeing as there are already 5 comments to this post, I think I am safe in saying that I'm a bit too late with this information. ;-)

By the way, have you seen a picture of Terrence as Tugger? ^_^

[rainbowjehan.livejournal.com]

Turns out it's only Mistoffolees. I was /so/ sure I could detect two different voices. >_<

Oh, okay.

*snugs* Silly. I am all the appreciative.

Also, sort of. I've seen the taped version of the musical from the Nashville Theatre. Spandex.