It's a CATS Life

Cats has been with us for ten years. Longer, if you count previews.

"Yeah," Susan Martin says. "Ten years." She trudges through the lobby of the Winter Garden Theatre. Performance 4,167 has begun; the crowd is mesmerized. They wave to the cast as it slinks down the aisles.

No one waves to Susan.

Martin, 38, is describing her work. Her hedge-trimmer voice drowns out Andrew Lloyd Webber. "By now," she jokes, "I thought I'd have a real job." But ten years ago, the telephone rang.

She says, "I'd been at the theater, on and off, since 1968." Since Mame. Then came a chance to work at an experimental show. One where humans, of all things, would dress as cats. She thought about it, and reasoned, "It's gotta be better than Twyla Tharp."

She stands by her decision.

"At Cats," she says, "I'm the show before the show." Why? "Because, let's face it: I'm entertaining." The truth? Because-let's face it-she's an usher.

She's not alone. "A lot of us are here ten years," Martin says. "Betty, Dotty, Valerie."

Maybe even Osmo.

They could leave if the wanted to. But a job with a steady show is rare. Besides, they're happy. A family. They would rather hear "Memory" eight times a week, now and forever, than lose their $27 per show. And get this: There are rumors that Webber, like a James Bond villain, is obsessed with surpassing A Chorus Line (which finally collapsed after fifteen years).

"I'd stick with it another five," Martin says nervously. "Sure. I don't see any reason in the world why I couldn't."

In thespian parlance, Martin is a directress. After the doorman tears your ticket, she scours it. Then she assigns you an aisle. She considers this a promotion.

"I used to put people in their place," she says. "Now I tell them where to go."

Is this hard work?

Well, Martin says, the late-seating policy is rough- "Once the show starts," she says, "there's a twenty-minute wait to be seated." The tardy are marched to the back of the theater.

Customers hate this. They haven't flown in from Copenhagen to squint at fake fur. But this is for their own safety.

"Yes," Martin insists. "in the opening numbers, the actors are out there in the audience, doing all sorts of crazy things. We can't be taking people to their seats then. There'd be chaos."

Try explaining these complex ideas with your hands, to someone who has just spent a day on the Circle Line.

When the last of the stragglers has been led to his perch, the ushers leave the theater. This moment, a critical one, is called "flashoff." Using her flashlight, Martin sends signals to the others. They meet in the back of the theater and, like the cast of Mission: Impossible, slip out the doors.

But the cats keep on singing.

It's 8:45. In 20 minutes, Martin will snuggle up to the theater doors. She'll listen for six words: "Memory. All alone in the moonlight..." In case you haven't used an elevator since 1982, these are the opening words to ... that song.

When "Memory" ends, intermission begins. Martin flings open the doors, points toward the bathrooms, and starts deciphering Japanese.

"Sometimes they're a little pushy, ' Martin confides. "But hey! When aren't New Yorkers?"

Martin handles foreigners with Berlitz precision - after all, they pay her salary. Most of the theater's 1,512 seat, are filled by folks who can't speak English. Fluency in a foreign language isn't required, but the ushers know French, Italian, German, Spanish, Russian, Finnish, and Japanese. And sign language-for "Check your camera"; "Give me your ticket"; and "The Playbill is free."

During the show, all sorts of unpleasantness can erupt. Occasionally, there's a heart attack in the audience. Children become traumatized by the scenery. Someone in the middle of the row decides he really does want audio assistance.

Another challenge - bomb scares. Sometimes, an otherwise rational person becomes unglued when he can't get a seat to the show. So, instead of doing the grown-up thing, like trying for another night, he decides that if he can't see Cats, no one else will.

Worse: groupies. Hector, for instance, has seen the show perhaps 200 times. In this regard, Halloween is especially taxing-the audience, unprovoked, often arrives in costume.

Now, for the good news: Martin met her husband, Richie Evans, here. He's a Cats electrician. At the wedding reception, the D.J. was asked not to play a single note from the show.

But Martin has more than a Cats husband. Her daughter from a previous marriage, 18, ushers at the theater. Plus, Susan's mother was a Winter Garden legend. She ushered during the great shows of the fifties and sixties. Susan filled in when Mom had open-heart surgery.

"And I'm still here. I was seating this guy one day," Martin says. "He told me this was his third time seeing the show." (Now, Martin loves Cats-but she stopped listening sometime in 1984.) "I asked the guy what kept bringing him back. He said, 'It's the magic. It's the energy. It's the fantasy.' And I said, 'Honey, if that works for you, then it works for me too.'"

Bob Ickes