Toronto production set constructed in Orillia

When Gus, the theatre cat, takes to the stage with his feline friends in Toronto this month, he’s going to be hard-pressed to think of a bad word about the set he’s going to be performing on this time around.

The 60-piece junkyard, designed by Tim Webb, of Gravenhurst, was built by Orillia-based carpenter Max Durnford in the Mariposa Arts Theatre warehouse on Brammer Drive, and will be the backdrop for Mirvish’s latest production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats, opening at the Panasonic Theatre May 28.

“Honestly, I never thought in my lifetime that I’d be doing anything for Mirvish,” said Durnford. “This is a huge opportunity.”

He got into set construction through Mariposa Arts Theatre about a decade ago, which is how he met Webb, who had been commissioned to build and design the set for Cats when it was at the Orillia Opera House under the direction of Dave Campbell in 2004.

“It was the very first set I ever did,” said Webb, a mural painter, who has gone on to design for productions across North America. “I did every last piece myself in my shop in Gravenhurst and brought them to the Opera House and I thought that was where it was going to end.”

But it didn’t.

The set ended up being remounted for three other Ontario productions and one in Connecticut before it was purchased by the Thousand Island Playhouse in Gananoque.

“They’ve just been storing it in a barn,” said Webb.

He called the company and asked if he could buy it back after he got a phone call from producer Marlene Smith — who brought Cats to Toronto in the 1980s — last September.

“She saw one of those productions Dave and I did seven years ago and she called us up personally,” Webb said, noting Campbell will be directing the production at the Panasonic Theatre.

The 2004 set, which arrived in three separate moving trucks at the beginning of last month, “wasn’t in bad shape,” he said, but it had to be revamped.

The original London stage show was “very 1980s punk-rock,” Webb said, noting when it came to North America, much of that was lost.

“Everything became very colourful and playful and whimsical and fun,” Webb said. “What we’re doing is taking it back to the original London production.”

For example, Durnford built a full-scale wooden replica of a Caterpillar excavating machine by taking apart the old car trunk the cats typically dance around on stage, built in 2004, and using it as the bucket.

That’s what Cats is all about, said Webb, scourging and reinventing.

There are no set changes in the production.

Instead, definitive pieces in the various scenes are items pulled out of the junkyard.

Take the seven-foot-tall hollow culvert, complete with a climbing wall, dance platform and two sets of stairs.

“During one set change where we have to go back in time to this previous life that this old theatre cat had, the whole culvert piece moves all the way down to centre stage. The front flips open, the sides open and the top goes back and it transforms into a pirate ship,” Webb said.

The project, while exciting, has also been challenging considering the time frame given to Durnford and Webb and the fact Durnford, not part of the theatre union, wasn’t able to get into the Panasonic Theatre with a tape measure. He had to rely on measurements he was given and, with help from Webb, essentially recreated the stage in the Mariposa Arts Theatre warehouse.

The set is being installed next week. Durnford is being brought on as a consultant to help with the process since it’s the first time all the pieces will be on stage together.

“We only have one chance to do it right,” Webb said.

“In terms of Canadian theatre, this is pretty much big time, and the fact that it started in Orillia is a nice touch,” he said.

Photo: Orillia carpenter Max Durnford, right, and Gravenhurst-based set designer Tim Webb created the set for the Mirvish production of Cats at the Mariposa Arts Theatre warehouse in Orillia. Cats opens at the Panasonic Theatre in Toronto later this month