Dick Rivington & the Cat (Play)

This wacky family show respects the codes of the British holiday tradition known as panto, which means playfully not holding anything back.New York City has a rat problem, but this holiday season one neighborhood is dealing with the menace: There is a new fearless cat on the Lower East Side, and he can take down an awful lot of vermin. He can also crack wise, twerk and land somersaults, because we are in the wacky land of pantomime, not the 6 o’clock news.The highly interactive, highly silly British holiday tradition known as panto has not made many inroads in the United States, but “Dick Rivington & the Cat” proves it can be done, respecting the genre’s codes while putting a local spin on them.The show borrows the structure of the panto classic “Dick Whittington and His Cat” and relocates it to the neighborhood surrounding Abrons Arts Center, where it is playing. Luckily the area has long been a haven for the downtrodden, so it welcomes the poor orphan Dick Rivington (Annette Berning) and his companion, Tommy the Cat (Tyler West), who have been wandering around looking for a place to call home. They introduce themselves to a rewrite of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song,” led by Tommy answering Robert Plant’s opening wail with “Meeeeeeeaoooow” — per panto formula, “Dick Rivington” features plenty of pop, rock and rap classic with new lyrics.Dick and Tommy make new pals — including Sarah the Cook (Michael Lynch), her son, Mitch (Matthew Roper), and the fetching Liliana (Jenni Gil) — and help them battle the rodent hordes (played by an ensemble of kids in furry outfits). The critters are led by King Rat (Bradford Scobie), who wants to extend his dominion from Chompkins Square Park “all the way from Corlears Hook to the very end of civilization, 14th Street!” (Is pizza involved, too? Do you need to ask?) Naturally, mayhem ensues, further boosted by the audience, which has been instructed to boo and hiss every time King Rat turns up. (New Yorkers, even children, need very little encouragement to loudly express their displeasure.)Bradford Scobie, center, as King Rat, with Muffy Styler, left, and Jonathan Rodriguez, right.Andrew T Foster for ONEOFUS/Abrons Arts CenterThe writer Mat Fraser and the director Julie Atlas Muz’s Panto Project had presented a very good “Jack and the Beanstalk” in 2017, but this second production, which had a curtailed run last year, is superior in every way. David Quinn created brilliantly inventive costumes on what must have been a tight budget (the cook’s outfit includes doughnuts and eggs over easy) and Steven Hammel’s sets make great use of Abrons’s relatively spacious stage.Most important, the action unfolds at a zippy pace and the jokes come nonstop. Parents will get a kick out of the double entendres involving Dick’s name (also a panto tradition) as well as the lighthearted allusions to the area’s gentrification — King Rat makes Dick and Tommy sleep with a potion so powerful that “a cookie in Essex Market could sell for less than 10 bucks and they wouldn’t wake up.”But what really elevates “Dick Rivington” is the acting, with a cast that perfectly understands that panto is no time for subtlety and “what’s my motivation?” interiority. West and Scobie, in particular, give some of the most exhilarating comic performances I have seen all year. West is tireless as Tommy — watch him chase a plastic bag — and manages to always be in the moment, reacting to whatever everybody around him is doing without coming across as obnoxious.As for Scobie, his King Rat is a ramshackle mixture of Alice Cooper and Adam Ant, prancing around with flamboyant assurance and unabashed glee at being a villain. (His big song is “The Phantom of the Opera,” of course.) He gets terrific support from Jonathan Rodriguez and Muffy Styler as the henchrats Scratchit and Ratchet. Too much of a good thing? Happily, this show does not believe in holding back.Dick Rivington & the CatThrough Dec. 18 at Abrons Arts Center, Manhattan; abronsartscenter.org. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes. More