Community News

Make a feline to the Playhouse for CATS!

By Bill Moss, Published: April 29, 2025

When the gong tolled time to be seated in the Flat Rock Playhouse, I felt I was returning to an old routine. For most of my 27 years in town, the Playhouse has been in a part of my life. I am lucky that way.

From the early days, when I would see a show with Scott Treadway or Barbara Bradshaw or Lisa K. Bryant or Michael Edwards, I was awestruck that the antebellum village of 3,400 people could be the host of professional theater of such quality in an old barn.

The Playhouse was always going to have its ups and downs, tied as it is to the availability of the discretionary dollar through downturns and upcycles. The near-death experience of 2012 was a harrowing time. Yet, somehow, thanks to the stoic leadership of the board chair at the time, Bill McKibbin, and to generous donors who wrote life-saving checks, and the sheer will of the players, tech support, set builders and costume stitchers, the Playhouse made a steady recovery — all the way up to March 2020.

Then, of course, Covid. Just as the Playhouse was amidst one of its strongest pre-season ticket sales numbers ever, the coronavirus epidemic shut down live theater and every other kind of congregant experience.

Yet, somehow, the Playhouse survived again, and made its way, cautiously at first, to reopen, cast shows, build sets, fill seats and make the house rock again with laughter or swoon with tears.

Then, of course, Helene. Trees crashed down, power went out, doors closed, theater-goers had way more urgent priorities on their plates.

And now, 2025. This was the overture that played in my head as we marched down to row H. I saw a show or two between Covid and Helene but I felt like this was the first time back in the old barn in a more normal time. And it was CATS. Appropriately enough: The theater that had expended three of its nine lives over a decade and a half would paws no more.

I drank in the scene from the start, and within minutes of the first note I felt … not relief or comfort that things were the same, but awe and joy at what was unfolding before me. The dancers are amazing, the choreography (by Michael Callahan, from Broadway and Elon University) as brilliant as the story and music calls for, costumes, hair and makeup all up to the theater’s professional high standards. Beyond that, the theater had taken a giant leap forward in set design and tech. This was an advance that artistic director Lisa K. Bryant and production manager Adam Goodrum described to me last summer — before “Shawshank Redemption” opened. But never had I seen the graphic projection done as masterfully as in CATS. Dennis Maulden’s scene design and projection designer Jeb Purcell truly transport theater patrons into a new level of sensory enjoyment, making the live performance cinematic.

I could rave for the next six paragraphs about the fabulous singing and dancing and the band in the upstairs “pit” but it would be more space efficient to describe those parts that weren't special. … Sorry, can’t think of anything.

The joy of the Jellicle Cats — and their mischief, and ego, and delicate fragility — floats across the entire room, clear to the back row, as if kitten down for the soul blanketed us. I noted in the playbill that 11 of the singer-dancers on stage for this production were “delighted” or “thrilled” or “excited” to be making their Flat Rock Playhouse debut, which I think accounts for the tidal wave of communal fun flowing south toward Green River.

Conversely, the decision to add the “kitten cast” reminds us that we all belong to the Playhouse and the Playhouse belongs to us. Lisa K. Bryant, who directs, has given 17 young’uns the experience of their lifetime — and made 17 families very proud.

The cauldron of new blood, young blood and Playhouse tradition makes it work.

In CATS, only one feline gets to pass to the Heaviside Layer; at the theater on the Great Flat Rock, the shows transports all 500 of us to live-performance heaven.

I don’t know about you, but I have detected a God wink in the outrageously robust flowers that azaleas and rhododendron are showing off this month, a half year removed from Helene. Now I have one more reason for a spring in my step and smile in my heart: CATS is playing at the Flat Rock Playhouse.

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CATS plays through May 17 at the Playhouse. For tickets call 828-693-0731 or visit flatrockplayhouse.org.