The musical features Rachel York as the infamous Cruella DeVil, and has actors sharing the stage with fifteen real Dalmatians and using stilts to simulate the novel's original canine perspective.

In London in 1957, a pair of Dalmatian dogs, Pongo and Missus, live with their human owners, the Dearlys, and enjoy a happy life.

[4] In addition to having humans playing the primarily canine characters, 15 actual Dalmatian dogs are featured in the production, trained and handled by Joel Slaven.

She's big and brassy, ballsy and beautiful, clad in gorgeous black-and-red costumes that are visual feasts, with a bevy of black-and-white hairstyles that are tributes to the wigmaker's art.

York's exquisitely expressive face gives her the ability to play to the theatre's farthest reaches and her clarion voice ensures that every one of her musical numbers deserve to be heard again and again".

Lawson Taitte of the Dallas Morning News considered it "grand entertainment - and a pretty good musical", and felt the use of Dalmatian colored costumes, without dog features, and the use of stilts for the human characters, worked well.

tour de force" with powerhouse vocals and sex appeal", and felt the kids were "cuter" than the live Dalmatians in the musical.

Henrickson criticized the performance for getting "bogged down in staged bits", particularly the song for Jasper and Jinx and the addition of filler to the story, and for the "disjointed hodgepodge" of musical numbers that do not "fit well together or with the setting" and found some of the choreography "more show choir than showstopper".

Calling it a "slick and gorgeously designed production", he also praised York as "delightfully and deliciously evil" who manages to avoid scaring children in the audience by using various "layers of humor".

[12] BroadwayWorld.com's Jerry Ellis found it "pleasantly diverting, tuneful and fun to watch" and an "expensive and imaginative production", though he notes that the actors in human roles seemed to struggle with their balance on the stilts and could have been executed better.

In discussing DeYoung's lyrics, he considered them "late-'70s-style power ballads" that lacked "emotional connection [and] suspense" and did not add anything to the story's narrative.