Cats: The Jellicle Ball

I now understand why there was such an outcry online over Cats: The Jellicle Ball posting a closing notice of August 8 after opening in April. The amount of talent on display in this show—the singing, dancing, choreography and costumes (Cats won Tonys for Best Direction of a Musical, Best Choreography and Best Costume Design of a Musical, and deservedly so)—is incredible.

I’ve always tried to support gay artists (and I suppose every Broadway show has some gay artists within their ranks), but it must be said that trans people—and particularly trans people of color—are the most marginalized segment of the LGBT community. So to see this display of sheer pride and joy coming from this community is particularly moving.

There’s a larger issue here, too.

Broadway musicals are struggling right now because of the huge costs involved in mounting (and attending) them. On the flip side, straight (i.e., nonmusical) plays with celebrity casts are doing better and star-studded plays are now moving to off-Broadway. The economics of Broadway are such that, like movies, it’s become the realm of revivals and adaptations. Very little original work is being done on Broadway.

Cats: The Jellicle Ball, while ostensibly a revival, is a complete reimagining that makes it an original Broadway show in its own right.

And that brings up another issue, which is the Tony Awards.

There was a big controversy this year over which musical should win the award for Best Revival of a Musical. It was seen primarily as a competition between Ragtime (which I didn't see and did win the Tony) and Cats.

I think a lot of times the Tony Award is given to the show which is considered to have the best chance of touring and Cats may just have been seen as “too gay” and/or “too Black” for middle America.

That should not be seen as a criticism of Cats, but a criticism of middle America. Cats: The Jellicle Ball may not have a big audience, but they have a devoted audience. I’ve never seen an audience reaction to a show like I’ve seen for Cats.

Everyone associated with this show should be proud of their work. The reason this show is closing is not their fault.

It’s ours.

Jill Clayburgh/Starting Over/An Unmarried Woman

Last night, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) featured a Jill Clayburgh lineup, including Starting Over (1979) and An Unmarried Woman (1978). Clayburgh was one of the most important film actresses of the 1970s (along with women like Jane Fonda and Meryl Streep), but I feel like younger audiences (i.e., those under 50) might not be familiar with her work. (Marsha Mason is another great ’70s actress who I feel has been forgotten. Perhaps TCM will devote a night to her as well—but I digress.)

And while I saw both Starting Over and An Unmarried Woman when they were originally released, it was so long ago that I had forgotten them and they now function as time capsules of that period. And since the ’70s is my favorite period of film, they unleashed a whole bunch of emotions and memories.

This was the era of women’s liberation, Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” and Ms. magazine, and these two films are emblematic of that. An Unmarried Woman, in particular, seems to focus on women’s emerging sexual liberation, as it discusses such things as female orgasm and dating younger men.

Starting Over seems a little bit corny by today’s standards. (I missed the beginning, so I might have to—wait for it—start that one over!) But it was notable for a few reasons.

It was Candice Bergen’s first comedic role after being cast (miscast?) in a series of dramatic roles (most famously, Carnal Knowledge). It also marked a transition for Burt Reynolds from sex symbol/action hero to a more sophisticated comedic role, playing a college professor (complete with tweed jacket with elbow patches).

Some interesting tidbits about both films which tie them to the ’70s: Both films make references to Valium and therapy, and feature scenes at Bloomingdale’s. (An Unmarried Woman also features a pre-gentrification Soho in which artists still lived!)

Some interesting biographical notes (which TCM host Ben David Mankiewiz helpfully supplied): Starting Over was written by James L. Brooks, the co-creator of such TV shows as The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Taxi, who, a few years later, would win several Oscars for Terms of Endearment.

An Unmarried Woman was written by Paul Mazursky, who I feel is an auteur on the same level as Woody Allen. (I attended both Paul Mazursky and Woody Allen film festivals in the pre-VHS/DVD/streaming era, when revival houses like the Bleecker Street Cinema and Cinema Village were important parts of New York City’s cultural landscape.)

Missing from the line-up (not surprisingly) was Bernardo Bertolucci’s Luna, in which Clayburgh plays a woman who has sex with her son!

Next up: Marsha Mason, who was married to Neil Simon (who wrote her Oscar-winning role in The Goodbye Girl) and starred in such edgy fare as Cinderella Liberty.

Human League/Soft Cell/Alison Moyet Generations Tour at Radio City Music Hall

Since there was no Cruel World festival this year, I did what I thought what was the next best thing: I bought a ticket to see Human League, Soft Cell and Alison Moyet’s Generations Tour at Radio City Music Hall.

Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me” and Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” are probably two of the most popular songs of the ’80s and, even though I’d recently seen Soft Cell and Moyet at Cruel World, I hadn’t seen Human League since the early ’80s at New York City’s Palladium. (Human League’s set at Cruel World was cut short by “severe weather,” but I was watching Iggy Pop at one of Cruel World’s other stages. His set was also cut short.)

First of all, it must be said that Radio City Music Hall is a breathtaking venue. Not only is it the largest indoor theater in the world, it’s also one of the most beautiful. I was trying to think of some of the other shows I’d seen there: Talking Heads’ Remain in Light tour (where I sat in the last row), Pet Shop Boys, B52s, Sade. (Yes, it’s been a while.)

Alison Moyet opened the show. Moyet owes a lot of her early success to Vince Clarke, the songwriter for their duo, Yazoo (Yaz in the US) as well as early Depeche Mode and Erasure, and she performed several Yazoo songs: “Don’t Go,” “Situation,” “Only You,” “Nobody’s Diary.” I wasn’t as familiar with some of her solo work (except for “Love Resurrection”) and I thought the bass player in her band was a little loud, overpowering her vocals and the other instruments, but she received rapturous applause, nonetheless.

Next up was Soft Cell, which now consists solely of founding vocalist Marc Almond, since multi-instrumentalist and producer David Ball passed away last year. (Almond paid tribute to Ball at the end of his set.)

Soft Cell’s breakthrough album, Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret captured a certain era of New York and London nightlife. Videos during their set featured ’80s New York celebrities like Klaus Nomi and John Sex and clubs like the Pyramid and Danceteria. Almond performed a new song called “Danceteria” (from Soft Cell’s new album, also named Danceteria) and mentioned that he was wearing a Danceteria T-shirt. (There’s also a song called “Danceteria” on Madonna’s new album, Confessions II. I wonder if Jim Fouratt and Rudolf are getting royalties?)

I thought Almond’s vocals sounded a little thin at first, but he recovered nicely on “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye” and, of course, “Tainted Love.” (Is it the difficulty of reproducing recorded vocals live or just my memory? I’ll have to go back and listen to my 12-inch single of “Memorabilia.”)

I also liked “Nostalgia Machine,” a 2022 song I wasn’t familiar with, and, interestingly, he performed a cover of Was (Not Was)’s “Out Come the Freaks” (also from Danceteria).

Finally, Human League. Their 1981 album, Dare, was a watershed album, scoring several hits in the UK, and its songs featured heavily in their set: “The Sound of the Crowd,” “The Things That Dreams Are Made Of,” “Seconds” “Love Action” and, of course, “Don’t You Want Me.” They also performed “Mirror Man,” “Louise,” “The Lebanon,” “Human,” “Tell Me When,” “(Keep Feeling) Fascination” and “Together in Electric Dreams,” lead singer Philip Oakey’s collaboration with Giorgio Moroder.

Oakey sounded even better than I expected and so did backup singers Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley, who sang lead vocal on (previously unfamiliar to me) “One Man in My Heart.”

All of which is to say that I was magically transported to early ’80s New York after-hours club, Berlin, where I first heard most of these songs. (The pre-show ’80s soundtrack also helped.)

And who could blame me for wanting to, as Cher might say, “turn back time.”

After all, I’m only human.

Love Story: Bait and Switch

I had no intention of watching Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette. I thought it was going to be just another example of Ryan Murphy trash TV. It lured me in with its promise of ’90s nostalgia and the usual Murphy mixture of beautiful people in glamorous locations, but then turned the tables on me and became something that I was still thinking about hours after it ended. It became a deeply affecting drama that turned two people who had been mere tabloid fixtures into three-dimensional human beings I actually cared about. It became more than just a love story, but a meditation on the destructive nature of fame itself.

The series starts with the courtship of JFK Jr. and Bessette, a publicist at Calvin Klein, with Bessette playing hard to get, while JFK Jr. is still nominally dating actress Daryl Hannah.

This is the fun part of the series. This is the part that gave me something I never knew I wanted: ’90s nostalgia. A pre-cell phone era filled with glamorous restaurants (Odeon, Indochine, Bubby’s), great music (Madonna, Sade), and celebrities (Calvin Klein, Cindy Crawford, Kate Moss).

By the end of the series, JFK Jr. and Bessette are struggling to keep their marriage together as Bessette, who has quit her publicist job due to all the media attention focused on her, feels trapped inside their apartment.

I don’t know what went on in the personal lives of JFK Jr. and Bessette, so I have to look at this as a work of fiction. (There’s a disclaimer at the beginning of each episode that says some people and events were fictionalized for dramatic purposes.) But as a work of fiction, it’s extremely well done.

The great writing (Connor Hines is the primary screenwriter) is helped by strong performances by Grace Gummer as Caroline Kennedy, Jessica Harper as Ethel Kennedy, Constance Zimmer as Carolyn Bessette’s mother (Ann Messina Freeman), Naomi Watts as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Alessandro Nivola as Calvin Klein. Even Paul Anthony Kelly (JFK Jr.) and Sarah Pigeon (Carolyn Bessette), who, like the people they portray, are two of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen, turn in affecting performances.

There’s been some controversy about the portrayal of Daryl Hannah (played by Dree Hemingway). She comes off as a bit of an airhead. (If you read Hannah’s well-written essay in The New York Times, you know that she’s much more than a ditzy movie star.) But even the fictionalized Hannah comes across as someone who tried to save JFK Jr. from the trap of his own fame.

Murphy is primarily known for guilty pleasures like The Beauty, Feud and American Horror Story. But this, along with The Boys in the Band and The Normal Heart, may be one of the best series he’s done.

I just hope it doesn’t spawn a JFK Jr. bus tour.

"All the Bands in the ’80s" FULL MOVIE

The End of a Revelatory Job

The view from my host stand

The most challenging (or, at least, different) job I’ve ever had just ended. I was a host at an outdoor restaurant in Bryant Park Winter Village. I worked in freezing temperatures, rain and snow, and now that it’s over, I’m sad. Not just for the loss of income and routine (although both those things are true), but something more ineffable. In many ways, it was a revelation. When you observe and deal with people for six to seven hours a day, you learn a few things.

Here’s what I’ve learned.

I dealt with people from all over the country and all over the world. Most of them were polite and grateful for the smallest act of kindness. (Fortunately, politics never came up. I did have one customer with a Trump hat, but I didn’t say anything.)

Here’s another thing I learned: I love kids. (And, it should go without saying, dogs.)

Whenever I saw a family with a baby, toddler or small child, my heart just exploded with paternal love. I thought, Is there any love greater than that of a parent for a child?

There’s a scene at the end of Marty Supreme when Timothée Chalemet’s character bursts into tears when he’s shown his newborn baby and I thought, Of course! The enormity of that moment must be overwhelming!

I’m not saying I’d actually want to raise a child to the age of 18. That must be the most difficult job in the world. But it must also be the most gratifying.

I also want to give a shout out to the deli owner who brightened my day every morning I ordered my coffee and bagel with a schmear. These are the kinds of people who make New York City great!

My original intention in writing this was to write a positive, uplifting piece after what I think we can all agree was one of the most horrendous years any of us have experienced, and I hope I’ve accomplished that. (I could write a whole other piece on the first year of Trump 2.0, but that would take an entire book!)

People have been railing against the commercialism of Christmas at least since Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and I have a bit about Christmas that I do in my stand-up act.

Yet this was the first year I actually experienced the Christmas spirit!

But don’t think I’ve gone soft. After all, they start advertising for Valentine’s Day on December 26.

"All the Bands in the ’80s" Screening

I’m going to be having a screening of my screenplay, “All the Bands in the ’80s” (the full movie) on Saturday, January 24, 2026 at 9pm at Pangea, 178 Second Avenue, New York City.

There’s no cover, but Pangea has a $20 minimum. Advance tickets are available here: https://cur8.com/23871/project/135388. (You can also use the QR code on the flyer.)

If you can’t attend the screening, I’ll be posting the full movie on my YouTube page (YouTube.com/paulhallasy1) the next day. (You can watch the scenes I’ve already filmed there now, but I’m not posting the last scene until after the screening.)