CATS: The Jellicle Ball on Broadway: What to Know Before You Book
A practical guide to CATS: The Jellicle Ball — what kind of Broadway night it actually delivers, who it’s best for, how it differs from the original Cats, and what to know before choosing it for your trip.
235 W 44th St
Opens Apr 7, 2026
One intermission
Under 4 not admitted. Strobe & haze.
This is not simply Cats back on Broadway. CATS: The Jellicle Ball is a wholesale reimagining — Andrew Lloyd Webber’s iconic score and T.S. Eliot’s characters transported into the world of New York City’s underground ballroom scene, where the Jellicle Ball becomes a queer competition of fashion, performance, and survival. The choreographers are New York City Ballroom legends. The costumes, by Obie Award winner Qween Jean, are runway-grade. The Off-Broadway production at PAC NYC won three Obie Awards, a New York Drama Critics Circle Special Citation, and appeared on best-of lists at the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time Out, and The New Yorker — and was extended three times before its transfer to the Broadhurst.
This page helps you work out whether CATS: The Jellicle Ball is the right Broadway choice for your specific group and expectations. For the right audience, it’s one of the most exciting things on Broadway right now. For visitors who want a traditional revival, it is deliberately something else.
What CATS: The Jellicle Ball on Broadway is actually like
The original Cats — first performed in 1981, running on Broadway from 1982 to 2000 — told the story of a tribe of cats competing at the Jellicle Ball for the chance at a new life. CATS: The Jellicle Ball keeps that framework but moves the entire world of the show into New York City’s ballroom scene: the underground queer performance tradition that gave birth to voguing, categories like “Face,” “Realness,” and “Runway,” and the competitive structure of the ball itself. The Jellicle Ball becomes a ballroom competition, the characters compete in categories, and the choreography is built not on the classical-inflected movement of the original but on the vocabulary of New York ballroom.
What this means in practice is a Broadway show with a very specific and distinctive visual identity. The choreographers are Omari Wiles, from the House of Ricci, and Arturo Lyons, from the House of Miyake-Mugler — both Obie Award winners and Chita Rivera Award winners who are Ballroom legends in their own right before they were Broadway choreographers. The costumes by Qween Jean are runway-level fashion rather than the leotard-and-leg-warmer look of the original. The performer playing Macavity is Leiomy — “The Wonder Woman of Vogue” and a lead judge on HBO’s Legendary — making her Broadway debut. Old Deuteronomy is played by André De Shields, the Tony and Grammy Award winner from Hadestown, as a figure of commanding, ageless wisdom whose presence anchors the show’s more exuberant passages.
The score is still Andrew Lloyd Webber’s — “Memory,” “Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats,” “Mr. Mistoffelees” — which means the musical familiarity is intact. But the show’s movement language, visual identity, and cultural frame have been entirely rebuilt. The Washington Post’s off-Broadway review called it “the most exhilarating fun that can be had in the theater.” The New York Times called it “a lightning strike that sets joy free.” Both descriptions reflect something real about what the show is when it works: an experience that moves through the body as much as through the mind, in the way that great dance always does.
The production is also one of Broadway’s most visually lavish — “a kaleidoscope of glittering spectacle” is how the producers describe it, and the production design supports that description. This is not a spare or restrained production. It fills the Broadhurst with light, costume, movement, and sound in a way that rewards an audience that shows up ready to be overwhelmed.
Ballroom culture is a performance tradition originating in New York City’s LGBTQ+ communities of color in the 1970s, in which participants compete in categories — often based on fashion, dance technique, and the performance of different identities — at events called balls. The culture became widely known through Jennie Livingston’s 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning, and has since influenced mainstream fashion, dance, music, and television (RuPaul’s Drag Race, HBO’s Legendary, FX’s Pose all draw directly from it).
You do not need to know ballroom culture to enjoy CATS: The Jellicle Ball — the show explains its own frame clearly enough to bring in any audience. But knowing the tradition going in adds a layer of meaning to the competition structure, the categories, the Houses, and the way the performers move. For audiences unfamiliar with ballroom, the show is a vivid introduction to it alongside the Cats score; for audiences who know and love ballroom, the show is a celebration of something they already understand.
Who CATS: The Jellicle Ball is best for
The clearest fit is an audience that comes to Broadway for the experience of being in the room with something alive and stylistically specific — people who respond to dance as a primary language, who are drawn to fashion and visual invention, or who want the particular energy of a show that is genuinely, specifically of this cultural moment rather than simply a polished revival of something familiar.
The choreography is the show’s central achievement. Audiences who love to watch exceptional movers in a theatrical context — and who come to Broadway as much for bodies in space as for narrative — will find this production deeply satisfying.
Qween Jean’s costume design and the full production aesthetic are extraordinary even by Broadway standards. For audiences who respond to what a show looks like as a primary pleasure, CATS: The Jellicle Ball is one of the most visually distinctive productions currently playing.
The ballroom competition frame gives the show an energy closer to a New York nightlife event than a conventional Broadway musical. Audiences who find that register thrilling will find the show electric.
CATS: The Jellicle Ball is one of the more distinctive date-night Broadway choices in the current season — shared spectacle, a lot to discuss, and a show that gives both people in the room something to respond to. The Broadway date night guide covers it in the context of the full season.
The show also has a particular resonance for theatergoers who follow the performers specifically — André De Shields as Old Deuteronomy is a major Broadway event in itself for anyone who knows his work in Hadestown and across four decades of theater. And Leiomy’s Broadway debut as Macavity is a casting decision that carries its own cultural weight for audiences who know her from the ballroom world.
Is CATS: The Jellicle Ball a good first Broadway show?
CATS: The Jellicle Ball is a strong first Broadway show for a specific kind of first-time visitor — one who comes in specifically drawn to this show’s identity, rather than one looking for the most accessible general introduction to what Broadway does.
The case for it as a first show: the Andrew Lloyd Webber score is one of the most recognizable in the musical theater canon, which means the music provides a familiar anchor even if the production frame is unfamiliar. The show’s spectacle and energy are genuinely overwhelming in the best sense — leaving the Broadhurst after CATS: The Jellicle Ball, a first-time visitor understands immediately that Broadway is capable of doing something with bodies, light, and sound that no other medium can replicate.
The case for caution: CATS: The Jellicle Ball is a deliberately stylized, culturally specific reimagining that asks its audience to engage with a performance tradition most people don’t encounter in their everyday lives. First-time visitors who are already excited by ballroom culture, vogue, and fashion will find the show immediately legible and thrilling. First-time visitors who want a clearer narrative arc and a less confrontationally stylized Broadway experience will have a better time starting with something more conventionally structured — and returning for CATS: The Jellicle Ball once they have a baseline understanding of what Broadway can do.
The first-time Broadway visitors guide covers the full current season with this question in mind.
Is CATS: The Jellicle Ball good for kids or families?
The show carries an ages 12+ recommendation, with children under 4 not admitted. The age guidance is meaningful: the ballroom frame, the production’s visual intensity, the sensory effects (strobe lighting, flashing lights, theatrical haze, and smoke), and the show’s cultural register are all calibrated for an older audience rather than a younger one.
For children 12 and up who are already engaged with the cultural world the show draws from — teens who watch Legendary, who know voguing, who are interested in fashion and performance — this can be an extraordinary experience. The show treats its cultural source with genuine respect and intelligence, which means older teens approaching it with some context will find it exciting rather than bewildering.
For younger children or for families whose primary goal is a shared Broadway experience accessible across age groups, this is not the right show. The original Cats was a family-friendly show; CATS: The Jellicle Ball has been reimagined specifically for a more adult audience. For families with younger children looking for a Broadway musical that works for everyone at the table, the Broadway shows for kids guide covers the current season.
Sensory advisory: CATS: The Jellicle Ball uses strobe lights, flashing lights, theatrical haze, and smoke throughout the production. These are significant and persistent effects — not occasional moments. For anyone in your group who is sensitive to strobe lighting or theatrical fog, this is important information before booking.
The Broadhurst Theatre and Runway Seating
The Broadhurst Theatre at 235 West 44th Street opened in 1917 and is one of the Shubert Organization’s historic Broadway houses, seating approximately 1,200 across orchestra and mezzanine. It is a large and beautiful traditional Broadway theater — well-suited to a production at this scale, with excellent sightlines from most positions.
CATS: The Jellicle Ball has one unusual seating option worth knowing about: Runway Seating, which places audience members on the stage itself, adjacent to the performance space. This is an immersive option for theatergoers who want to be inside the world of the show rather than watching it from the house. Runway Seating is limited and sells separately from standard house tickets — it offers a different kind of proximity to the choreography and costume work that is worth considering if the close-up experience of the ballroom world specifically interests you.
For standard house seats: center orchestra provides the best full-stage view of the choreographic sequences. The mezzanine offers a complete overhead perspective of the ensemble movement that is particularly valuable for a show where the full spatial composition of the dance — the way many bodies move in relationship to each other across the stage — is a significant part of the visual experience. The Broadway seating guide covers the Broadhurst layout in more detail.
CATS: The Jellicle Ball is not a production that has come to Broadway without a track record. The PAC NYC off-Broadway run earned three Obie Awards, a New York Drama Critics Circle Special Citation, a Chita Rivera Award, two Outer Critics Circle Awards including Outstanding Revival, and appeared on the year-end best-of lists of the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, Time Out New York, and The New Yorker. It was extended three times.
This production history means that what arrives at the Broadhurst is not an experiment — it is a fully developed production whose creative vision has been tested and refined over a significant run. The Broadway version carries the same cast, the same creative team, and the expanded resources of a major Broadway house.
When CATS: The Jellicle Ball may not be the best Broadway choice
If you want a faithful traditional revival of the original Cats. This is the most important thing to understand before booking. CATS: The Jellicle Ball is not a revival in the conventional sense — it keeps the score and the characters but rebuilds the entire production world around a different cultural frame. Visitors who have loved the original show and are hoping to revisit it in a new production will be watching something deliberately, substantially different. That difference is the point of the show; it is also a reason to know what you’re booking before you do.
If you or a member of your group is sensitive to strobe or flashing lights. The sensory advisory is serious. Strobe lighting and flashing effects are used extensively throughout the show. This is not a show that uses these effects sparingly.
If you’re bringing young children. The ages 12+ guidance reflects both the show’s content and its register. Children under 12 who encounter CATS: The Jellicle Ball may be overwhelmed by its sensory intensity and unable to engage with the cultural world it’s working within. For families with younger children, the current Broadway season has better options for that situation.
If you want the most broadly accessible Broadway first choice. CATS: The Jellicle Ball is a distinctive and culturally specific production. For visitors who want a Broadway musical that requires no prior context and delivers the most immediately legible possible experience, something with a more conventional narrative structure — The Lion King, Wicked, Aladdin — is a lower-friction starting point.
What to know before booking CATS: The Jellicle Ball
Runtime: Approximately 2 hours and 45 minutes, including one intermission. This is a longer Broadway evening — plan pre-show dinner timing accordingly, particularly for an 8:00 PM curtain. The show runs later than most comparable musicals.
Age guidance: Ages 12 and up. Children under 4 are not admitted.
Sensory advisory: Strobe lights, flashing lights, theatrical haze, and smoke are used throughout. This is a persistent feature of the production, not an occasional effect.
Runway Seating: A limited number of stage seats are available, offering an immersive experience adjacent to the performance space. These are different from standard house seats and should be selected with the understanding that the view is unconventional — you are inside the show, not watching it from the house.
Previews vs. opening night: The show opens officially on April 7, 2026. Preview performances (from March 18 onward) are working performances as the production finalizes its Broadway presentation. The off-Broadway run gives this creative team a well-developed production to bring to Broadway, which reduces but does not eliminate the normal variables of a show still in previews.
A limited number of $45 in-person rush tickets are available at the Broadhurst Theatre box office on the day of each performance. The digital lottery offers $49 tickets — the most accessible option for flexible visitors. Both are subject to availability and seat location may vary. The Broadway rush and lottery guide covers how to use both options effectively.
For visitors with fixed dates and preferred seating — particularly anyone interested in center orchestra or Runway Seating — booking in advance is the better approach. The show’s visibility following strong pre-opening coverage means that the best positions are likely to sell faster than less prominent productions in the current season. The when to buy Broadway tickets guide covers timing strategy in full.
Planning a CATS: The Jellicle Ball Broadway evening
The Broadhurst Theatre at 235 West 44th Street is in the heart of the Theater District, steps from Restaurant Row on West 46th and the full range of Hell’s Kitchen and 44th Street dining. With a runtime of approximately 2 hours and 45 minutes, the pre-show dinner window is tighter than for shorter shows — for an 8:00 PM curtain, dinner starting by 5:30 or 6:00 PM gives comfortable time without rushing. For a 7:00 PM curtain, 5:00 or 5:30 PM is the target.
CATS: The Jellicle Ball is one of the current season’s stronger date-night choices — it’s visually and kinetically stimulating in a way that gives two people a lot to respond to together, and the show’s specific cultural world generates genuine conversation. For that reason, a post-show drink rather than a rushed exit is a natural extension of the evening. The restaurants near Broadway guide covers the pre-show dining picture. The Theater District neighborhood guide and Broadway transportation guide cover the surrounding area and all arrival options.
Frequently asked questions
For audiences drawn to dance, fashion, spectacle, and the specific energy of ballroom culture, it is one of the most exciting shows currently playing on Broadway. The off-Broadway production at PAC NYC earned three Obie Awards, a New York Drama Critics Circle Special Citation, and appeared on best-of lists at the New York Times, Washington Post, and several other major publications — and was extended three times. The Washington Post called it “the most exhilarating fun that can be had in the theater.” For audiences who want a conventional revival of the original Cats, it is a deliberately different experience and worth understanding as such before booking.
Approximately 2 hours and 45 minutes, including one intermission. This is one of the longer Broadway musicals currently playing — plan pre-show dinner timing accordingly, particularly if the curtain is at 8:00 PM. The runtime may adjust slightly as the production settles into its Broadway run during the preview period.
The age guidance is 12 and up, with children under 4 not admitted. The sensory effects (strobe lights, flashing lights, theatrical haze and smoke) are significant and persistent, and the show’s cultural frame — New York City’s ballroom scene — is calibrated for an older audience. Teens aged 12 and up who have context for ballroom culture, or who are open to an intense visual and kinetic experience, can have a genuinely great time. For families with younger children, the current Broadway season has better options specifically designed for younger audiences.
No — and this is important to know before booking. CATS: The Jellicle Ball keeps Andrew Lloyd Webber’s score (including “Memory” and the other familiar songs) and T.S. Eliot’s characters, but reimagines the entire production within New York City’s ballroom culture. The choreography is built on vogue and ballroom movement rather than the classical-inflected style of the original. The costumes are runway fashion. The competition structure is a ballroom ball with categories. The production design is entirely new. Visitors hoping to revisit the original Cats will be watching something deliberately, substantially transformed. That transformation is what makes this production significant — and it is also the reason to understand what you’re choosing before you book.
CATS: The Jellicle Ball is playing at the Broadhurst Theatre, 235 West 44th Street in the Theater District. Previews began March 18, 2026, with an official opening night of April 7, 2026. The production has no announced closing date. The Broadhurst is one of the Shubert Organization’s historic Broadway houses, seating approximately 1,200 across orchestra and mezzanine, and offers Runway Seating (stage seats with an immersive perspective) in addition to standard house positions.
CATS: The Jellicle Ball arrived on Broadway as something the season needed — a production with a genuine cultural identity, built by artists who are among the most significant figures in their respective traditions, bringing a world to the Broadway stage that most Broadway audiences have never encountered in a theater before. The critical response to the off-Broadway production was not tentative or qualified: it was an enthusiastic recognition that something genuinely new had been made from familiar material.
For audiences who are ready for it, it is one of Broadway’s most distinctive current offerings. For visitors still working out whether that’s them, the guides below cover the rest of the decision.