Andrew Lloyd Webber turned a Broadway performance into a street party on May 29, stepping into Cats: The Jellicle Ball for a cameo at the top of the show before taking over the sidewalk outside the Broadhurst Theatre for a post-show DJ set on West 44th Street. Tony winner André De Shields, who plays Old Deuteronomy in the production, was among the members of the cast who joined him as the music spilled into the night.
The gathering was more than a curtain-call flourish. It came as Cats: The Jellicle Ball rides nine Tony Award nominations, giving the night a built-in reason to feel like a victory lap. Fans and passersby packed West 44th Street to watch Lloyd Webber mix classics from his own catalog with mashups, including “Abracadabra Of The Opera,” his nod to Lady Gaga, along with 1970s and 1980s anthems. DJ Bill Coleman joined him for the set.
For Lloyd Webber, the celebration fit a production that has turned one of Broadway’s most familiar titles into something else entirely. Cats: The Jellicle Ball is a reimagined revival of his musical, with the Jellicle cats recast as drag ball contestants. It began previews on March 18 and officially opened at the Broadhurst Theatre on April 7, after a previous Off-Broadway run last year at the Perelman Performing Arts Center. The show is co-directed by Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch and features vogueing-infused choreography by Omari Wiles and Arturo Lyons.
The only uncertainty left from Thursday night is less about the music than the scale of the scene. The crowd on West 44th Street was large, but the exact number of people who stayed for the set and how long it ran were not immediately clear. Still, the pageantry had a familiar Broadway echo: this was not the first time Lloyd Webber has pulled people into the street for a celebration, after leading a similar gathering outside the Majestic Theatre in 2021 when The Phantom of the Opera returned to Broadway.
With the Tony Awards set for June 7, the night worked as a public exclamation point for a show already in the awards conversation. De Shields, returning to the role of Old Deuteronomy, stood at the center of that momentum inside the theater, while Lloyd Webber turned it into a block party outside it.
