Nominally, the story is about two rivals. On one end is the petty bourgeois turned artisto-by-marriage Lord Tony Baddingham (a delightfully peevish David Tennant), who is as nefarious as his Dickensian name suggests, scaling for power and prestige as the managing director of a commercial television station. Across the aisle is rakish, titled, and ravenous Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell), an Olympic show-jumper turned Thatcherite Minister of Sport, who, together with Declan O’Hara (Aidan Turner), a hot-blooded Irish broadcast journalist lured from the BBC to the countryside, forms a competing station.
How the People Behind Cats: The Jellicle Ball Made It Work
When, last year, the shiny new Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC) in Lower Manhattan announced the shows that would inaugurate its state-of-the-art theaters, a revival of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Cats set in the Harlem ballroom community raised more than a few eyebrows. The 1982 musical has its devoted fans; the original production ran for 21 years on the West End and 18 years on Broadway. But a catastrophic film adaptation in 2019—and the theater-kid uncoolness that has always pulsated beneath the plotless piece—made it tough to imagine it working.
So, more than a month into its mega-successful run—beloved by critics and audiences alike (today, the production announced its third extension)—how did Cats: The Jellicle Ball pull it off? For one thing, through an honest and open engagement with figures from the ballroom world, some of whom were cast in the show or brought onto the creative team. The creativity is most dazzling in the choreography by Omari Wiles, a ballroom figure who has worked with Beyoncé, Madonna, and Janet Jackson, and Arturo Lyons, another scene icon best known outside the balls for participating in (and, one season, winning) Legendary, HBO’s voguing competition. In this production of Cats, we’re not learning about a mystical group of feline cats hoping to ascend to another life, but getting a glimpse into a community of glamorous humans—predominantly queer and of color—competing for trophies in runway cat-egories.
“I have rarely seen an audience respond with as much joy and love,” Lloyd Weber said of the show in a recent statement. “The atmosphere was, quite simply, electric. Cats and ballroom culture both emerged in the same era and I am delighted that, all these years later, they are intersecting once again.”
To find out how Wiles and Lyons brought ballroom magic into a classic piece of musical theater, Vogue spoke with the pair, as well as two of the production’s breakout stars—Chasity “Tempress” Moore, who lends Grizabella the Glamour Cat an unforgettably poignant air, and Robert “Silk” Mason, who turns in a gag-a-minute take on the magical Mr. Mistoffelees—both of whom also hail from ballroom. These conversations have been edited and condensed.
Camila Cabello’s New Album Is a Glittering Work of Miami Sleaze
Camilla Cabello has played a few different girls in her career. As a member of the X Factor–forged girl group Fifth Harmony, she stood out to the show’s judges as an accessible, all-American pop star—so much so that after four years, she opted to embark on a solo career in 2016. In early releases like “Havana” and “Señorita,” the Cuban-born singer served up a 21st-century Carmen Miranda fantasy, seemingly geared to anglophone consumers.
Cabello dug deeper into her heritage in her 2022 album, Familia. Yet the vulnerable ballads of a dutiful immigrant daughter weren’t only about her own identity but her relationship to Latino culture more broadly. In songs like “Lola,” she contemplated a parallel universe in which her parents never left Cuba and Mexico to pursue greater ambitions.
In the lead-up to her new album, C, XOXO, Cabello broke things off with her longtime flame, Shawn Mendes, and ditched Los Angeles for the city that raised her: Miami. She then called on star producers El Guincho and Jasper Harris to help assemble an edgier sonic vibe for her, inspired by the hip-hop sounds she grew up with. Fusing her tracks with Jersey club (“I Luv It” with Playboi Carti), reggaeton (“Dream Girls”), and Afrobeat (“He Knows” with Lil Nas X), Cabello emerged with an eclectic record that mirrors the melting-pot quality of the Magic City.
I’m Gay, Engaged, and Terrified Trump Will Prevent My Wedding Next Year
Wednesday morning, I woke up and the first thought that sprung to mind was: “I’m supposed to try on wedding dresses today, but I don’t know if I can legally get married next year.” I felt a tightness in my chest and the start of tears as I grappled with what my life as a gay, engaged woman would look like in Trump’s America.
I’ve always been a pragmatic optimist—realistic enough to do the work, yet always holding the hope that it could make a difference. I spent the weekend before the election canvassing in Pennsylvania and making calls to Wisconsin, where I felt uplifted by positive pro-Harris conversations I had with swing state voters. Women were coming out in droves, it seemed, saying they voted for her, and some lifelong Republicans were going to cross party lines. While I absolutely encountered a few fiery, flag-bearing MAGA supporters circling our canvassing headquarters in pickup trucks, they just seemed to want to make their presence appear bigger than it really was.
Today, the one thing that scares me most is I no longer feel like I can envision my future. Will a stacked Supreme Court overturn my right to marry? Would I ever be allowed to have children with my fiancée via IUI or IVF? Will I even be allowed to adopt a child? If we do have a child, would we both be able to be their legal parents? If we cross state lines, would our marriage not be recognized? Would I not be able to visit my future wife in the hospital if she gets hurt or sick? Will my family be recognized as a family by my country?
My fiancé Liv and I had planned our wedding for November 2025 in our Brooklyn neighborhood. As a weddings writer and editor with years of experience covering celebrations, it has been so overwhelmingly exciting to finally work on planning my own celebration. But when I woke up on Wednesday, the first thing I did was to turn to Liv and tell her that we should get legally married at City Hall in the next few months. I expected her to protest and say I was overreacting, but she agreed it was not a bad idea. Our text group chat with our parents agreed, too. We didn’t know the future, but we thought that if we had a legal marriage now, it would be harder to void it later. And, if we ever needed to move to another country, the immigration process together might be easier. I was not alone in this idea. After a quick DM check-in with another queer, engaged friend in the wedding industry Jove Meyer, he said he had the exact same conversation that morning with his fiancé. Clearly, the ticking clock was loud enough for us all to hear.
My Favorite Place to Celebrate Pride? In Chappell Roan’s Instagram Comments
It can be hard for any queer person to know how best to celebrate Pride, something I’m appreciating anew at 30-going-on-31 (which, yes, is objectively Not Old, but still makes me feel like a crone every time I go to the Woods on a Wednesday night and everyone looks young and dewy-skinned enough to be my biological daughter). Gay bars are always a popular choice, but, like clockwork, they get crowded and claustrophobic every June. And when it comes to parades? Sorry, but I have all the promotional bank T-shirts I need already.
In my quest this month to find new places to hang out and affirm my queer identity without getting a) sweaty, b) overwhelmed, or c) unattractively drunk, I’ve identified Pride paradise in an unlikely place: the Instagram comments of one Ms. Chappell Roan, a.k.a. the Femininomenon herself, whose sex-forward lyrics and recent transformation into a chaps-clad Statue of Liberty—to say nothing of her pointed refusal to perform at the White House—have cemented her as an LGBTQ+ icon in her own time.
For queer, trans, or gender-nonconforming people, Instagram comment sections can be absolute cesspools, but Roan’s are a friendly, rainbow-bathed, who’s-who of the cool-kid scene, with everyone from Ariana Grande to Rina Sawayama to indie label Fashion Brand Company logging on to make their standom known. (Plus, Roan recently got a follow from no less a club-banger authority than Carly Rae Jepsen…collab soon, queens?) Witness the magic for yourself below:
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