''Catspaw'' is a 1974 rock musical by Australian playwright

Dorothy Hewett Dorothy Coade Hewett (21 May 1923 – 25 August 2002) was an Australian playwright, poet and author, and a romantic feminist icon. In writing and in her life, Hewett was an experimenter. As her circumstances and beliefs changed, she progressed ...

, with music by Terence Clarke, Piers Partridge and Roy Ritchie. It was Hewett's fifth full-length play and her first rock musical. It was written for the

Festival of Perth Perth Festival, named Perth International Arts Festival (PIAF) between 2000 and 2017, and sometimes referred to as the Festival of Perth, is Australia's longest-running cultural festival, held annually in Western Australia. The program features ...

before Hewett departed permanently for Sydney in early 1974. It is an

expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

or 'epic' play with an episodic plot loosely based on a quest. It is the first of her plays that deals with the conservation of Australia, both as landscape and cultural heritage, where 'imagination' is a universal cultural force opposed to the destruction of commercial interests. The Prologue and Epilogue are set in a car wreckers yard, where Cat has sought refuge with his girlfriend Rabbit and her young daughter Kitten. They set off on his motorbike on a hippie expedition to the desert to find out the 'fantastic possibilities" of life. In Act I the bike breaks down in Opal, an isolated gem town. Cat is bitten by the opal bug, but leaves town when he shoots a mystic Chinese prospector figure. Rabbit dies in childbirth. In Act II a flying saucer lands and disgorges a cargo of old Australian show-biz characters, who are "Greenies", come to save the country. They set off on a great protest march to the Bight, but instead end up back at the car wrecker's yard, with Cat's revolution come to nothing. However Cat makes a personal journey from arrogance to the beginnings of humility, particularly in his relations with the women, The play ran at the New Fortune Theatre from 12 February to 23 February 1974. and was directed by

Aarne Neeme Aarne as a surname may refer to: *Antti Aarne (1867–1925), Finnish folklorist * Els Aarne (1917–1995), Estonian composer * Johan Victor Aarne (1863–1934), Finnish metalsmith As a given name it may refer to: *Aarne Ahi (born 1943), Estonia ...

, who had directed Hewett's 1971 play The Chapel Perilous. A student production was conducted at the University of New South Wales in 1984, with a modified ending involving characters from the 1980s. The script is held in the Hangar Collection of unpublished playscripts. A rehearsal recording is in the University of New England Stage and Screen collection.

Review

Zoltan Kovacs, ''

The West Australian ''The West Australian'' is the only locally edited daily newspaper published in Perth, Western Australia. It is owned by Seven West Media (SWM), as is the state's other major newspaper, ''The Sunday Times''. It is the second-oldest continuousl ...

'' 14 February 1974.

References

Plays by Dorothy Hewett 1974 plays Musical theatre {{1970s-play-stub