Making sense of Seuss

As the Cat in the Hat, Cathy Rigby helps guide the audience through Seussical, a musical mix of the popular children's stories.

By JOHN FLEMING, Times Performing Arts Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 25, 2003

[Publicity photo] The Cat in the Hat is Seussical’s “PG Cabaret emcee,” Cathy Rigby says. “When you’re dealing with Seuss and the words and the different characters, to make the story flow, you need a narrator.”

Seussical was supposed to be the next Lion King, a musical children and adults would enjoy.

It had beloved source material, the whimsical children's books of humorist and illustrator Theodor Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss. The book and score were by the Tony Award-winning team of composer Stephen Flaherty and writer-lyricist Lynn Ahrens, also responsible for Ragtime and Once On This Island. A workshop of the show in Toronto had producers buzzing with anticipation and lining up to invest their money.

But something went wrong on the way to Broadway, and Seussical wound up as one of the biggest bombs in theater history. When the show closed in 2001, it had run less than six months and lost its entire investment of $10.5-million.

Cathy Rigby, starring in the Seussical tour that opens tonight at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, thinks the musical was a victim of high expectations. After the workshop and before the production headed to New York, it had a disastrous tryout in Boston.

"When Seussical came out of the workshop, it probably had some of the greatest word of mouth, but then it went to Boston, and somebody there didn't like the show and wrote a bad review," Rigby said.

In a desperate rescue operation, the original director and designers were fired. "I think the artistic people and producers became afraid, and you started getting decisions made by committee, and that's very difficult to do with art. It becomes something different than it started out to be," Rigby said.

"It reminds me of the Olympics in some ways, when someone comes in with a reputation and it doesn't turn out like people expect."

Rigby knows all about the Olympics and expectations. She was a 15-year-old gymnast at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, then won the first individual medal by a U.S. gymnast in the world championships, a silver, two years later. But she failed to live up to expectations at the 1972 Games in Munich, finishing 10th in the all-around competition and paling in comparison to Olga Korbut of the Soviet Union. Now 50, the gymnast turned actor is best known for her performance in the title role of Peter Pan, touring the country and playing several engagements on Broadway. In Seussical, she's the Cat in the Hat, the role she also had near the end of the Broadway run, following David Shiner and Rosie O'Donnell.

Much of Seussical is based on Horton Hears a Who and Horton Hatches the Egg, but Flaherty and Ahrens drew upon many other familiar stories, too. For the tour, they and new director Christopher Ashley made changes to put the focus on the Cat in the Hat and his relationship with a boy named JoJo.

"They wanted to make the story more understandable," Rigby said. "All that entailed was allowing the Cat to be a little more of the facilitator and interact with the audience and be onstage a little bit more so that he could explain. When you're dealing with Seuss and the words and the different characters, to make the story flow, you need a narrator."

Rigby, whose 17-year-old daughter, Kaitlin McCoy, also is in the cast, likens the Cat to a "PG Cabaret emcee." She said it doesn't matter if a man or woman plays the role.

"The Cat is the facilitator of mischief and chaos, very much a metaphor for life, I think. He's the one that keeps the audience informed," she said.

The Seussical tour, which started in September and continues through June, has been hailed as a hit -- at least at the box office. The demand for family-friendly shows has helped it to do good business in many venues around the country.

Some critics have even given it near-rave reviews, including one composed in Seussian verse for the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio. Other have panned the show, saying that problems remain.

Rigby likes the original and revamped Seussical. "You know, I actually loved the New York version of the show," she said. "Now it just feels much more streamlined as far as making the story understandable."

THEATER PREVIEW

[Publicity photo]

Seussical opens tonight and has eight performances through Sunday at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, 1010 N. MacInnes Place, Tampa. Tickets: $20.50-$62.50. (813) 229-7827, toll-free 1-800-955-1045 or www.tbpac.org.

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