'Pete the Cat' rocks the Wallenstien

MOSES LAKE — The Wallenstien Theater at Big Bend Community College erupted Saturday night into high-octane silliness with the presentation of “Pete the Cat,” a musical adaptation of the popular children’s books by Kimberly and James Dean. The show is produced by New York-based TheaterWorks and sponsored by Columbia Basin Allied Arts as part of its Green Turtle children’s theater series. A crowd of about 180 people turned out for Saturday’s performance.

The show opens with Pete the Cat himself (Mike Dorsey), rocking in an alley with his bandmates Grumpy Toad on keytar and Gus the Platypus on drums. Not everybody appreciates their music, at least not at the volume they favor, so along comes the cat-catcher to apprehend Pete and teach him a lesson with “a really long time-out” – a week as a housecat.

The family selected to take Pete in consists of second-grader Jimmy Biddle (Terry Lee III), his 5-year-old sister Olive (Nikki Stewart) and their parents, all living in their “perfectly perfect home.” The Biddles are a little uncertain about the whole having-a-cat thing and question whether they really are cat people at all. Cats, according to Jimmy’s book on the subject, “don’t wear shoes or say ‘hi,’” and Pete immediately does both. Their fears are soon allayed as Pete teaches them to jam in true feline fashion.

Pete stays in Jimmy’s room as Olive is allergic to cats. Jimmy’s uptight nature makes it difficult for him and Pete to be roommates, but Pete wins him over, and even accompanies him to school the next day. Jimmy’s teacher, it turns out, is a big fan of Pete the Cat’s band, and changes the class from math to art in his honor. This terrifies Jimmy, who had studied hard for a math test but wasn’t prepared for art. When he panics and copies another child’s painting, Jimmy is sent home in disgrace and worries that he’ll never graduate from second grade. At home, he hides under the couch “like a stale cheeto,” until his family and newfound friend coax him out.

Pete takes Jimmy on a quest for the perfect painting subject. Their vehicle is a VW bus (the initials stand for “very wonderful”) and the two of them travel to the bottom of the sea, the surface of the moon, and the Renaissance, where Jimmy meets the Mona Lisa and despairs of ever painting its equal. Finally the two (accompanied by Olive, who threatened to tell on them if she wasn’t included) bus their way to a jam club in Paris, where Jimmy finds magic sunglasses that will let him paint the perfect artwork.

The hard-rocking score and high-energy songs keep the show hopping and bring the life lessons home for the characters with nary a hint of preachiness. Jimmy learns not to be too hard on himself, Pete learns to care about others (especially when Olive goes missing in Paris) and Olive, well, she learns that she loves cats even if they make her sneeze. And the audience, both wiggly children and patient parents, learned to rock along with a cat in red tennis shoes.