CAT

Cats can be vain. Cats can be clever. Cats have a craving for attention that's hard to beat. Cats can even bear an exceptionally bad grudge, if "Babe" is to be believed. But cats are also the most important part of one of Andrew Lloyd Webber's most famous musicals. And Dave, the solitary star of CAT (yes, the dropped "S" is intentional) possesses all the aforementioned characteristics and attributes.

All except one. The one that matters most to him: musical stardom. That is the central theme of CAT, penned by Jamie Beamish and Richard Hardwick and performed by Gerard McCarthy. Following a sell out at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2014 and a tour that saw him stop in Newtownabbey last year, McCarthy has returned to offer Northern Irish audiences another helping of ferocious feline frolics and fantasies from the mind of one man. And a subsequent viewing only enhances the boldness, darkness, depth and humour that was apparent last time around.

An intentionally muddled and consistently mesmerising love-hate letter to the joy and pain of musical theatre blockbusters, this particular CAT is a rare breed, the sort that triumphantly has its cake and eats it too, even if its central figure doesn't.

The stage, set up like a dressing room, is a shrine to a disclosure and bonfire of internal and external vanities, a mirror image of the mixed up, muddled up, shook up monologues and music that Dave will present to us in his cat costume. It is a sign of who this troubled soul wants to be and thinks he is, rather than who he actually is.

A self-proclaimed "ordinary guy" from an "ordinary middle-class family" Dave was trapped in his father's paper business, a "tearable" industry that would seemingly never "fold". (The play is loaded with puns.) Until, that is, the sound of cogs awakened him to the movement that came with music... musicals, even, the beginning of an ultimately tragic love affair with musical theatre that both inspires and warps this poor man's mind.

It all comes from the power of finding a dominant passion within and striving to turn it into a career. And with Dave, the Richard Linklater-esque "liberal or wannabe artist vs. The Man" (see, in particular, "School Of Rock") is deconstructed hilariously and horrifyingly in a self-reflexive, post modern comedy-drama about the highs and lows of the celebrity world.

We, the audience, are both shocked and amused by the consequences of Dave's inability to adapt and accept rejection. The dark and light side of the all-too-relatable bitterness, delusion and self-entitlement that can result from daring to dream and receiving little or no reward are conveyed in arguably the most openly hilarious and quietly heartbreaking way possible. Who wouldn't share the pain of someone who threw all his energy into a role he believed was his, only to have it cut? And with cuts still very much the order of the day in the arts and culture world, this plot strand digs deep.

McCarthy's extremely active performance digs deeper still. Having needed a little time to feel his way into the role last time around, he has now mastered the character. He is simply a joy to watch, his gait and pipes reeking with passion and power. Forget Hollyoaks and The Fall – McCarthy may well have found his Indiana Jones or Han Solo here. This catatonic, catastrophic creation's smiles, frowns, ups and downs are clearly second nature to him now. He has a ball with Dave the CAT's antics; and so, I imagine, will you, after viewing his torrential travails.

Simon Fallaha