The film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats has a star-studded cast including James Corden, Judi Dench, Jason Derulo, Idris Elba and Jennifer Hudson to name but a few From the first shot — of just such a blue moon, distressingly fake, flanked by poufy cat-shaped clouds — to the last, “Cats” hurts the eyes and, yes, the ears, as nearly all the musical numbers, including “Memory,” have been twisted into campy, awards-grubbing cameos for big-name stars in bad-CG cat drag. Throughout the movie, she is introduced to the various Jellicles who are vying for that honour including Jennyanydots, Bustopher Jones, Gus and Skimbleshanks. The following names have also been used for the character of Victoria in various international productions: Final performance of the original London production. She is portrayed by Francesca Hayward. Sing. Take your favorite fandoms with you and never miss a beat. Tap the link in bio to register. Should the whiskers really originate directly under the singers’ noses? The character's role has been greatly expanded from her stage counterpart. Menu. To a kid raised in Texas, having experienced “Cats” at the theatah passed for sophistication. Truth be told, it should have anticipated the backlash. And this year, audiences at the Royal Ballet instead got a run of “Coppélia,” a holiday alternative Hayward will return to with her Jan. 4 performance. (“The singing thing was terrifying at first, terrifying,” she says.) She is possibly an Ocicat or Egyptian Mau. An outstanding dancer with excellent classical training and technique required. | Victoria is the protagonist of the 2019 Cats movie. To more cultured New Yorkers, it was beneath contempt. The performer playing Victoria will often have a noticeable reaction whenever Queen Victoria is brought up in the musical. Nine may not be enough lives for some of the stars to live down their involvement in this poorly conceived and executed adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s hit musical. Company Credits Audiences have already been asking many questions about the film, particularly the choice to transforms its talent — Idris Elba, Taylor Swift, Judi Dench, Jason Derulo, Jennifer Hudson — into cats through the addition of CGI “fur.” Hayward’s first time seeing herself as a cat was at the same time as everyone else, the release of the first trailer last summer while she was in Mexico performing with the Royal Ballet. In addition to starring in her first film, this December also marks the first winter season in a long time that she hasn’t performed in a “Nutcracker” since she started dancing. Frankly, it's a cats' paradise, and it's dazzling to see. So while not true to the musical, her expansion was necessary to turn the stage show into a motion picture. Markings Despite already being a star in the ballet world, Francesca Hayward hasn’t had to deal with the paparazzi. © Copyright 2020 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media, LLC. That's partly due to the nature of the musical itself (Cats definitely raises a lot of questions). The instant a filmmaker comes along, blocking and framing all that dancing into medium and tight shots, the effect is lost. While the musical is basically entirely set in one room, the film takes advantage of creating multiple locations in 1930s London. Ballerina Francesca Hayward stars as Victoria the White Cat in the "Cats" film starring Taylor Swift, Idris Elba and Judi Dench. '” Tap the link in bio for more. 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Get all the top news stories and alerts straight to your inbox. The film adaptation of Cats is finally here, for better or worse, and there's many questions to be answered. Which male cat she performs this with varies between productions but is most commonly Plato/Admetus or Tumblebrutus. Hayward, a principal dancer for the Royal Ballet, stars as Victoria the White Cat in the film adaptation of "Cats." Performers : The answer to the former gets to a fundamental philosophical difference between the stage and screen treatments of the material: “Cats” the musical was adapted from a volume of T.S. During the Ball, in one of the more mature scenes in the show, we see Victoria's pas de deux (known to fans as the mating dance). At the end of the movie, Victoria has finally found a place where she is accepted and loved as Old Deuteronomy confirms that she is now a Jellicle cat. Simply put, face paint and Lycra have done the trick for decades. In the film, however, Victoria has her own backstory and a full-on journey as she bonds with the Jellicle cats and forms an emotional connection to Grizabella. Practically speaking, putting a pure white costume under stage lighting washes out all the costume details, so while the impression given is pure white, she is actually fairly detailed. She wears a bejewelled pink collar that offsets her pale markings. It’s been a lifelong study; Hayward grew up with five cats — “big fluffy cats, huge cats” — and currently lives with a cat named Simon. Victoria and Jemima are often paired together, both on-stage and at showcases, to represent the two sides of the show; Victoria standing for grace, beauty, and elegance, and Jemima standing for innocence, emotion and playfulness. Back in the summer of 2015, the co-directors of Disney’s “Zootopia” went rogue, disregarding the advice of their corporate colleagues and appearing onstage at the Annecy animation festival disguised as the talking-animal cartoon’s fur-covered lead characters, an anthropomorphic rabbit and her foxy best friend. 2019 Film This Ultra-Rare Patek Philippe World Timer Sold For $5.5 Million at Phillips’s Geneva Auction, Google Steers Into DOJ Antitrust Suit Ahead of a Potential Biden White House, 50 of the Best Beauty Gift Sets And Stocking Stuffers Everyone Will Love. Her movements are graceful, elegant, and timid, although she is not shy around the Rum Tum Tugger. Photo Credit: Universal Pictures, She plays Victoria the White Cat, who, unlike in the original stage production, is the central character of the movie and a lens for the audience (Victoria in the original also doesn’t have a singing solo. The show-stopping track was so effective that it landed the songwriters a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song. Far from taking place just in one room, Cats is full of extravagant sets with storefronts and theaters straight out of T.S. She is a beautiful and graceful kitten who is coming of age. Take your favorite fandoms with you and never miss a beat. Unlike the other cats, Victoria is sympathetic to Grizabella's plight. While she does not sing any solo lines, she features heavily in the dance numbers. I mention this because it’s just one of dozens of things the folks at Universal seem not to have taken into consideration before making a movie version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s long-running musical “Cats” — another being the need to define, for generations uninitiated, the meaning of “Jellicle,” a nonsense word repeated nearly six dozen times in the opening number alone. Female https://catsmusical.fandom.com/wiki/Victoria?oldid=134772. Spelling variants of her name include Viktoria (German) and Wiktoria (Polish). If you sense condescension in this review, it’s not intentional: “Cats” was the first major musical I ever saw, and I wore the T-shirt proudly, with its signature cat eyes — a logo that subliminally emphasized the show’s priorities via the silhouetted dancers half-disguised in the feline pupils. But it's the differences between Cats the movie and the original musical that will have many fans leaving the theater a bit perplexed. © Copyright 2020 - Penske Media Corporation, clock Victoria the White Cat is a featured dancer in the musical Cats. Read more about this version of the character here. Just as that adaptation went its own way, bringing a sense of grit and grime (and shaky, documentary-style camerawork) to Victor Hugo’s ragged portrait of France’s dispossessed, this one also breaks from what had been done onstage. At the end of the day, one wonders whether Hooper has even spent much time around cats. Character So I'll dance with these beautiful ghosts. Kitten She has light gold, tan, or grey markings on her costume. | The experience has certainly broadened awareness of Hayward to new audiences. The character is featured in a ballet solo ("White Cat Solo") as well as a pas de deux in the musical, and leads most of the ensemble dance routines. In fact, Victoria's arc is the closest the film comes to a proper storyline. Capitol 6 Theatres - Victoria, British Columbia - cinema serving Victoria and the surrounding communities. Dancer Victoria is initially amused by his hapless attempts but shows more interest in flashier cats like Tugger. In December 2013, Andrew Lloyd Webber, creator and composer of the musical stage production Cats, teased that Universal Pictures, which had purchased the film rights to Cats many years earlier, was putting the project into active development. Eliot’s poetry — including the source material for the musical, “The Naming of Cats.” (She got a copy for herself, too. The leading kitty in the new live-action "Cats" film is played by a black woman — but you wouldn't know it by looking at her fur. Privacy Policy and ), “I gave [Hooper] some pointe shoes when we wrapped,” she adds. In a weak attempt to create more of a story (it’s a misconception that “Cats” has none, when in fact it does, just not a particularly compelling one), Hooper and co-writer Lee Hall have made Macavity a more nefarious character, lurking on the sidelines of each of the previous cats’ songs. Hooper broadens beyond the back-alley setting to reveal a stylized version of London’s Trafalgar Square, all but devoid of homo sapiens yet newly festooned with cat-related details (extending far beyond its familiar bronze lions). Who is Macavity? Victoria “No one really knew what the finished cat would look like, but it’s really incredible to see yourself. Skeptical cats and dyspeptical cats don’t need Jellicle cats to be photorealistical cats, for if they were, it would open up a whole new realm of headaches to pedantical cats and critical cats — questions no one wants to consider about why they walk upright and talk in rhyme, and how to explain away their bosoms and bulges. Kitten White and brown It wasn’t so much the fur, but seeing my ears and the tail — because these were all things you were told to think about.”. She is one of the kinder and more accepting cats, like Jemima/Sillabub, and is well-liked by the rest of the tribe. ‘Cats’: Film Review ... mouth-agape Victoria displays one expression for the entire movie). Hooper frames things through Victoria’s slow-blinking gaze, as the new arrival — tossed out in a pillow case by the film’s lone human character — adjusts to her new feline family. Age Victoria is the principal ballerina in the show. In keeping with fans' expectations, the plot and most characters, like Jennifer Hudson's Grizabella, James Corden's Bustopher Jones, and Ian McKellan's Gus the Theatre Cat remain the same. The movie version of Victoria remains a graceful ballerina, but has taken over Jemima/Sillabub's role in the stage show with regards to Grizabella's story, as well as being given a new backstory to allow her to serve as the audience surrogate. Victoria is young, uninhibited and inquisitive with a beautiful physique. Filming & Production From the moment a teaser trailer hit the web last summer, the studio has been reeling from the ridicule, seemingly blindsided by harsh attacks on the character designs, the visual effects and the very notion of adapting the hit show.