Ok, a word or two about the Moscow Cats Theatre. As part of her Christmas gift, I took my mom to see this show at the Opera House between my Hawaii and Seattle trips. (The other part was the Guthrie Family Tour.)Imagine if you can, a group of street kids putting on a pretend circus show using cats. In order to get the cats (and one dog) to do tricks, they have to give the cats little morsels of wet cat food. Each trick must be followed, or wholly enticed by, a treat. Now make the kids about 40, dress them in bad clown clothes and day-glo wigs, crank the volume on your third-world disco boom-box to ear-splitting, throw in a splash of low-rent Cirque du Soleil, bad juggling, a disco ball and a gratuitous ballerina, and you've got yourself a show. Oh yeah, you'll need about 20 cats, one hairless.
We laughed ourselves silly. It was about the silliest thing I've ever seen in my life. Russian clowns (was the juggler actually drunk, or just bad?), cats driving cars, dragging carts, spinning batons, jumping, scrambling, climbing. The cat agility tricks were great: climbing horizontally under a rope, up a 15 foot pole, etc., I found it amazing that the cats would dash off the stage in the right direction after each trick, but there was probably another treat waiting just off stage. At the risk of completely ruining the ending if you should have the chance to see this show (which you won't) the last trick is the best, if only for the wide-eyed concentration of the cat at the top of a very tall pole looking out towards the audience at the platform below. It was thrilling to watch that cat size up the distance, wiggle, and leap, saucer-eyed, limbs, claws and tail spread wide.
For kids up to about 10 years old, this would be a pretty good show.
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