About the work
Andrew Lloyd Webber's through-sung musical, based on T.S. Eliot's poetry collection Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, was premiered in 1981 at the New London Theatre. The work ran for 21 years in London and 18 years on Broadway, defining the era of the megamusical. Original choreography by Gillian Lynne and direction by Trevor Nunn established the template for ensemble-based, dance-intensive musical spectacle.
Plot
On the night of the Jellicle Ball, tribes of cats gather at a junkyard to decide which among them will be chosen to ascend to the Heaviside Layer and be reborn. In a sequence of character numbers, various cats present themselves: the sensual Grizabella, once beautiful and now fallen; the magical Mr. Mistoffelees; the theatrical Gus; the railway cat Skimbleshanks; the criminal Macavity. In the final moments, the wise patriarch Old Deuteronomy chooses Grizabella, who sings the anthem Memory and ascends in glory.
Cultural significance
Cats transformed the economics and aesthetics of musical theatre. Memory, sung by Grizabella, became a worldwide hit and has been recorded in over 150 versions. The original Hamburg German-language production opened in 1986 at the Operettenhaus Hamburg, where it ran for fifteen years and established the modern German musical industry. Tom Hooper's 2019 film adaptation with its uncanny-valley visual effects became one of the most notorious flops in recent cinema history—which in turn renewed interest in the original stage production's more successful approach.