Frontmezzjunkies reports: Cats: The Jellicle Ball Returns to Broadway
Get ready, jaded theatre lovers — Cats: The Jellicle Ball is making its way to Broadway, and yes, I’m both excited, but a tad nervous about it. After taking the Off-Broadway stage by storm in 2024 at PAC NYC, this bold reimagining of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s classic is headed to the Great White Way in Spring 2026. Previews are set to begin March 18, with an opening night on April 7, at the Broadhurst Theatre. This is the version of Cats that trades fur and feline fantasy for ballroom, identity, and celebration — and I can’t wait (but will hold myself in check).
This revival isn’t a simple revival — it’s a reclamation. Under co-directors Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch, the show has already redefined its world: the Jellicle Ball becomes a runway, cats become human bodies, and “Memory” is no longer just a lament but a battleground. Choreographers Arturo Lyons and Omari Wiles bring real ballroom roots and nightclub electricity, and André De Shields leads as Old Deuteronomy, lending ancestral weight and radiant presence. The Broadway run promises a full cast transfer and production scale-up, though the heart of the show will still live in the edges — in the voguing, the pacing, the sociocultural beats beneath the spectacle.
Inside the review for , I wrote that Cats: The Jellicle Ball “exceeded expectations and delivered expertise in abundance.” At PAC NYC, the musical “Death [Dropped] Deliriously Divine and Feline-Free,” and I remain hopeful that the Broadway version will preserve that bravado and boldness inside the tactile, fierce joy that made the Off-Broadway run feel like a revolution in drag and dance theater. Broadway’s houses are bigger, and the stakes are higher. But if this transfer holds even half of what that run delivered off the beaten path, we’re in for a more stunning and necessary Cats than Broadway has seen in decades.
For information and tickets, click here.
