Why the admiration, you might think. Well, let me try to explain. I have to take you back to 1983 in order to get it right. That's the year when my mother went to London, and by pure luck got to see Cats at the New London Theatre. This is a musical very suitable for children, and as I grew up with a musician as a father, music, dance and theatre was an important part of my life (and still is). My mother instantly knew that this was something I would LOVE. She brought back the LP for me, and I was sold. I didn't know what the show was about, I had never seen it, and at the age of six I didn't understand English. But the atmosphere in the music told me all I had to know, so I started composing my own dances and had a blast.
As the years went by I started dancing classic ballett, and joined the Childrens Theatre at Rogaland Theatre in Stavanger, Norway. In 1987 I was a castmember of the 30th Anniversay Show at this theatre. I did the part of "Helene Harefrøken", a singing rabbit from the book "Sirkus Mikkelikski", written by the Norwegian writer Alf Prøysen. After finishing running at the main stage, we did some performances at different stages. Among them The Hall of Concerts in Stavanger.
Now I'm back home again, and are working on a show of my own, together with some good friends. All of this, more or less, inspired by Cats. But it really bothered me that I hadn't seen it yet. The oppurtunity to go to London or New York had not appeared, and I didn't see it happen in the nearest future either. So, you can imagine my feelings when I suddenly stumbled over Cats - the video in a record store. I bought it, and was walking on air all the way home. But when I got home I started thinking. What if it wasn't that good? What if it destroyed all my childhood thoughts and expactations? The video stayed in the bag for a couple of days, untill one night when I had the house to myself. I opened a nice bottle of red wine, and started watching it. I was stunned! This was better then I could ever imagine!! And the best thing...Munkustrap.
From the second this grey tabby cat appeared on the screen, I was hooked. And as the show went on, he amazed me more and more. His elegant moves, his wonderful voice and the brilliant facial expressions. How can a human being be so "catish"? And who was responsible for this amazing performance?
That was Michael Gruber. I got curious, who was he? So I started looking for information on his professional carrere, and learned that this man had done a long and interesting carrer and are still performing. He had also been Munkustrap in the Broadway production of Cats, and that's where he can be seen today.
I have seen a lot of actors and dancers, but no one had impressed me like this. So, I decided to put up an appreciation site on the world wide web, and that's the one you're visiting now. I work hard, surfing the net a lot, to find out more interesting details on Michael's professional carrer. So I hope you'll come back on another occasion.
I also attended a school performance as a troll in Henrik Ibsen's "Peer Gynt" in 1991, and the part of Kaa in "The Jungle Book" at a school theatre in 1995.
When I returned to the amazing world of theatre in 1998, it was behind the scene. I was a stage engineer at a south/westcoast tour of the wellknown Norwegian play "Karius & Baktus".
