Will there ever be another Cats?
Thirty-five years ago, producer Cameron Mackintosh took a chance on the musical with his long-time collaborator, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. Despite scepticism from their peers, the venture paid off. Big time. The Economist in 2013 estimated that Cats has made a 3,500 per cent return on initial investments. Mackintosh recognised the success as rare.
“The ’80s was such an extraordinary time for Andrew Lloyd Webber and I, because within a decade, we produced four absolutely amazing shows with Cats, Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera and Miss Saigon,” he told Gulf News tabloid! in November.
“No one’s ever seen that level of success and originality...I think it made people think, ‘Oh, well there’s plenty more of them.’ The truth is there aren’t. They’re few and far between, shows of that magnitude.”
The original Broadway show arrives at Dubai Opera on January 16 and runs until January 28. First we revisit ten weird, wonderful and woeful facts about the show.
1.
Cats was based on a poetry book by T.S. Eliot titled Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. The book was widely regarded as a children’s book, but Lloyd Weber said: “[Eliot] was writing in 1938-39 to his various godchildren and he would send letters to them with these poems in them.
But, of course, he knew that the parents were going to be opening the letters so they’re kind of written over the shoulder for adults, really.”
2.
Cats and Dogs: The Musical doesn’t have the same ring to it, but Eliot’s book was originally supposed to be about canines, too. He later said, “Dogs don’t seem to lend themselves to verse quite so well, collectively, as cats.”
3.
Cats’ current success was in no way anticipated. The musical has nearly no plot, and people predicted its failure at the start — but they were clearly off the mark. “Everybody in the West End thought we were completely and utterly crazy,” Lloyd Webber said. “The moment that Cats came on stage could have been one of the most ridiculed moments in the history of theatre.”
4.
Tom Hooper will be directing a film adaptation of Cats for Universal Pictures and Working Title, according to Variety. Production is pegged to start this year or next. Hooper worked with Universal and Working Title previously on the 2012 movie adaptation of Les Miserables, starring Anne Hathaway and Russel Crowe, which was a critical and box-office success. He also directed The King’s Speech and Danish Girl.
5.
The song Growltiger’s Last Stand was axed from the show last year after criticism of it being racist. Originally, an anti-Chinese slur in the lyric “with a frightful burst of fireworks, the Chinks they swarmed aboard” was changed to “with a frightful burst of fireworks, the Siamese they swarmed aboard.” But the song was then cut altogether.
6.
An audience member once sued the musical for $12 million (Dh44.06 million), according to reports. Evelyn Amato, seated in a fourth-row orchestra seat with her fiance in 1996, felt violated when one actor playing Rum Tum Tugger chose her as his dance partner during an interactive portion of the show. “I didn’t want to be a part of whatever he was going to do to me,” she said.
“I was afraid after he’d pulled me up so hard. I was petrified as a matter of fact.”
Amato claimed that the actor “crouched down and started moving his hips back and forth, saying, ‘Boom, boom, boom’.” She sued for assault, battery, invasion of privacy, violation of civil rights, negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress and false imprisonment, though it’s unclear what became of the suit.
7.
The original Cats production had cast Judi Dench to play Grizabella, but during rehearsals, Dench snapped her Achilles tendon and couldn’t carry on. Elaine Paige replaced her, and became known for her chart-topping rendition of the song Memory.
8.
Memory — one of the most popular songs from Cats, sung by glamour cat Grizabella — was based on an Eliot poem that was nearly never written.
Eliot’s wife, Valerie, found the song to be too sad for children, so Eliot did not include it in the book, nor did he finish it. He did write a fragment of it, however, which Valerie gave to Lloyd Weber.
Memory combined the unfinished poem with Eliot’s other works, Preludes and Rhapsody on a Windy Night.
9.
Eliot died in 1965, a whole 15 years before Cats hit the stage. But he won a posthumous Tony Award — Best Book of a Musical — in 1983.
10.
Cats is the fourth-longest-running show in Broadway, behind The Phantom of the Opera, Chicago and the Lion King. It premiered on the West End 35 years ago. The show has had an approximate 7,485 performances in that time that, if performed back-to-back, would be the equivalent of two years non-stop performance.
Don’t miss it
Tickets to see Cats in the UAE begin at Dh275 from dubaiopera.com.
