Today we went to see the Moscow Cats Theatre (warning: crappy website) at the Wilshire Ebell. Four humans, eight cats, one dog. These circus kitties were amazing! Probably the best trick was the "handstand in the palm of the Eastern European circus performer stereotype", although some of the parallel bar tricks were cool too. The audience was mainly kids and (grand)parents, and everyone loved it when the cats did their thing. There was a fair amount of human clowning too, most of which fell wonderfully flat. There were many awkward pauses-for-applause-that-never-came after oblique little pantomimes about... I don't know... love or something. Everyone was far too busy waiting for the next amazing kitty-trick to appreciate the mad circus skills of the human portion of the troupe. To be fair, they did have pretty cool circus skills, it's just that... well who cares about circus skills any more?
On the plus side, the cats seemed to be happy and well-cared-for. Which makes sense, given that they represent the livelihood of the troupe. Minus the cats, the Moscow Cat Theatre has got nothing. Well, nothing except for the music, which ran the gamut from cheesy eurodisco to cheesy eurodisco versions of the Nutcracker Suite. I honestly couldn't tell if they were ironically cashing in on the Borat phenomenon, or if they simply represented the kind of tragic unhipness that Borat parodies so mercilessly. Either way, the music truly took the performance to a new level! Kudos to the DJ.
Overall, really fun stuff.
