Cats: Cast Recordings and Soundtrack (1981-2019)

When Thomas Stearns Eliot died on 4 January, 1965, he had left behind a body of work that included poetry: Prufrock and Other Observations (1917), Poems (1920), The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ariel Poems (1925), Ash Wednesday (1930), Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (1939), Four Quartets (1945), and more. Plays: Sweeney Agonistes (1926), The Rock (1934), Murder in the Cathedral (1935), The Family Reunion (1939), The Cocktail Party (1949), The Confidential Clerk (1953) and The Elder Statesman (1958). Non-fiction: Tradition and the Individual Talent (1920), Selected Essay, 1917-1932 (1932), A Choice of Kipling’s Verse (1941), The Frontiers of Criticism (1956), and more. Thank you, Baron Wikipedia.

By May 1981, composer and producer Andrew Lloyd Webber had written scores for musicals including: The Likes of Us (1965, unproduced until 2005), Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor® Dreamcoat (1968), Jesus Christ Superstar (1970), Jeeves (1975), and Evita (1976). Three of them were hits, sealing the artistic legacy of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, even if they had never written another musical. Andrew had also composed scores for films: Gumshoe (1971) and The Odessa File (1975), not to mention the movie version of Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) directed by Norman Jewison. He had also composed the classical rock album Variations (1978), featuring his brother Julian on cello. This was followed by concept album and TV special Tell me on a Sunday (1980) starring Marti Webb and featuring lyrics by Don Black.

English stage producer Cameron Mackintosh had mounted productions including: The Reluctant Debutante (1967), Anything Goes (1969), Salad Days (1971), Trelawney (1972), The Card (1973), Winnie-the-Pooh (1973), Godspell (1974), Rock Nativity (1975), Lauder! (1976), Side by Side by Sondheim (1976), Oliver! (1977), My Fair Lady (1978), Oklahoma! (1979), Tomfoolery (1980) and more, with mega success just around the corner but we’ll get to that shortly (I hope). Thank you, archived version of Cameron Mackintosh's official website!

English stage director Trevor Nunn had helmed productions including: Tango (1966), King Lear (1968 and 1976), Henry VIII (1969 and 1970), Hamlet (1970), Titus Andronicus (1973), "The Scottish Play" (1974 and 1976), Hedda Gabler (1975), The Comedy of Errors (1976), Romeo and Juliet (1976), The Winter's Tale (1976), The Alchemist (1977), Every Good Boy Deserves Favor (1977), Three Sisters (1978), Twelfth Night (1978), The Merry Wives of Windsor (1978) and probably more. Thank you, About the Artists web page!

English ballerina and choreographer Gillian Lynne had worked on musicals and productions including: The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd (1965), How Now, Dow Jones (1967), Ambassador (1972), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1977 which she directed), The Way of the World (1978), Songbook (1979), My Fair Lady (1979) which saw her working with producer Cameron Mackintosh, and probably more. Thank you again, About the Artists page!

English set and costume designer John Napier had designed for such productions as: The Ruling Class (1968), A "Scottish Play" (1969), The Foursome (1971), Cymbeline (1974), "The Scottish Play" (1974 and 1976, twice), Knuckle (1974), Equus (1974), Hedda Gabler (1975), Much Ado About Nothing (1976), King Lear (1976), The Comedy of Errors (1976), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1977), Kings and Clowns (1978), Three Sisters (1978), The Merry Wives of Windsor (1979), and probably more. Thanks again, About the Artists! Trevor and John Napier, of course, had been very much involved with the Royal Shakespeare Company and Trevor was the Artistic Director of the R.S.C from 1968 to 1986.

Joined by producer Really Useful Theatre Company (owned by Andrew Lloyd Webber), orchestrator David Cullen, musical directors Harry Rabinowitz and David Firmin, lighting designer David Hersey, sound designer Abe Jacob (thank you, Broadway World!) and the original London team, this was the team behind one of the most commercially and artistically successful musicals ever staged. Initially, it was also one of the most daunting. You probably know some of this at least, but let's hear the story.

From Andrew's perspective: "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Evita" had been launched as pop records, while "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor® Dreamcoat" was first performed at a school. None of these musicals had been premiered specifically inside a theatre. "Jeeves" (a book musical with spoken dialogue) was a flop and "The Likes of Us" hadn't been performed. The new musical would be Andrew's first musical since "Jeeves" to be premiered on a stage. It was also his first musical, period, that Andrew would produce. Well, co-produce because the Really Useful Theatre Company had banded with Cameron Mackintosh.

At this point, Cameron had not produced an international new English musical. Remember, "Les Misérables", "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Miss Saigon", not to mention *this* musical, were waiting just around the corner.

Trevor Nunn had not directed a major new English musical. That is, on the scale of "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Evita", not to mention *this* musical. After *this* musical, "Starlight Express", "Les Misérables", "Aspects of Love", "Sunset Boulevard" etc. were all *around the corner*. So too was the case with John Napier. Gillian Lynne, on the other hand, had choreographed, for example, the Broadway production of "The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd" (By the way, I love the song "The Joker" since I heard it as the theme to "Kath and Kim".)

Then there was the subject matter, and let's look into that. When *this musical* was conceived, Andrew had been searching for projects, from what I've been able to tell, that would be the antithesis to "Evita". "Evita" was the blockbuster. Variations on a theme by Paganini with cello and rock band, released as the 1978 LP "Variations", was almost the exact opposite. So too was "Tell me on a Sunday", a musical that would be performed as a one woman piece. Andrew had also played with the idea of writing a small piece that would show Leoncavallo and Puccini writing their versions of "La Bohème". In amongst this, Andrew had always loved "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" and wanted to set the poems in a project that would be similar to "Tell me on a Sunday". But then something changed.

Andrew performed several songs from "Practical Cats" (1980) at his annual Sydmonton Festival, and it was attended by T.S. Eliot's widow Valerie. She showed Andrew, I believe, four unpublished poems, including: "Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats", a sort of prologue to "Practical Cats", "The March of the Pollicle Dogs", and "The Ballad of Billy McCaw" about a singing parrot. But then there was "Grizabella", the story of the glamour cat and... the rest is musical history, because this is the poem that not only led to "Practical Cats" becoming something more, but the dramatic purpose of the song "Memory". Now the evening would have an arc, the redemption of Grizabella the Glamour Cat. Wow.

From there, the combined force of Cameron Mackintosh, Trevor Nunn, Gillian Lynne and Andrew Lloyd Webber et al, with an all-singing, all-dancing, all-acting cast, not to mention one hell of an advertising campaign from the Dewynters advertising agency, would create history with a blockbuster running on the West End and Broadway, revivals, countless productions worldwide, and a permanent place in the musical theatre pantheon. They would create history with *that musical* but...

As late as the first preview at the New London Theatre (now the Gillian Lynne), Andrew and Cameron, at least, were terrified.

Andrew had walked out of a rehearsal (again, read "Unmasked") after he'd seen a run through of "The Awefull Battle of the Pekes and the Pollicles" (my least favourite moment), and thought the whole thing was a disaster. Trevor managed to talk Andrew out of cancelling it altogether. Meanwhile John Napier had been told by Gillian Lynne that the costumes he had painstakingly designed were going to hinder the choreography, and in a spontaneous outburst he threw them all into the gutter outside. According to Andrew, nobody ever saw them again.

So when that first preview rolled around, bearing in mind that the audiences all had to be in their seats before the curtain because of the revolving floor, Andrew and Cameron... were terrified. The audience... responded approvingly, and suddenly all of the elements seemed to coalesce. Suddenly, the whole evening had come together. Suddenly, *this musical* was going to work. Only at one of the next previews (thanks Cameron in the 1998 "Cats" documentary), somebody in the audience shouted "Rubbish!" Andrew and Cameron nervously retreated, only to find out later on it was a punter referring to the rubbish dump onstage.

By the time "Cats" opened at the New London, word of mouth had already spread. Not only had Andrew and Cameron's necks been saved (and this story in "Unmasked" certainly makes for some hectic reading), they wound up with something more than a hit. They had created *that musical*, the one that was advertised as "Now and Forever", and it truly was "Now and Forever" with the colossal run of its original production, the musical that spawned "Memory". They had created... wait for it, wait for it..."CATS". Ah yes!

Just a year later, with the original cast recording now on the shelves, "Cats" would be launched on 7 October 1982 at the Winter Garden Theatre, New York. It closed on 10 September 2000 after 18 years, 15 previews and 7,485 performances. The West End production closed on its 21st anniversary on 11 May 2000 after 8,949 performances. On Broadway, "Cats" superseded "A Chorus Line" as the longest running musical in Broadway history, to be succeeded again by "The Phantom of the Opera". Success and more success followed around the world, with productions from Tokyo and Vienna to Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne in Australia. Cast recordings followed, including a 1998 filmed version put together at London's Adelphi Theatre, thus preserving the original "Cats". The song "Memory", according to Baron Wikipedia, by 2006 had been recorded 600 times!

Speaking of the song "Memory"... Andrew had composed the music for his "La Bohème" project (and if you want to get an idea of that version, listen to "Piano" on Sarah Brightman's 1995 album "Surrender"), but it had never got off the ground. To keep a long story short, Andrew was playing the music one day, and Trevor Nunn pounced, declaring it the new Andrew Lloyd Webber hit. And he was right! But it didn't have a lyric. Based on material from "Prufrock and Other Poems", various lyrics were assembled by Don Black, Tim Rice and Trevor himself. Tim's version made it as far as previews (I'm not sure about Don's, which was apparently called "Good Times"), but Trevor won out. As Tim said during the 2012 documentary "The Story of Musicals", the lyric was given to a lyricist chosen by the director: The director!

The song had been premiered by the original Grizabella, Elaine Paige, after Elaine had been the replacement for none other than Judi Dench. Judi had snapped her Achilles tendon during rehearsals, but she would appear in the movie of the musical from 2019 playing Old Deuteronomy. The movie directed by Tom Hooper had a somewhat less fortunate outcome. It became one of the biggest movie disasters of all time, almost like an alternate timeline of what might have happened had the stage musical not worked. Besides a few clips, which left me ranting and raving hysterically, I did enjoy the Jennifer Hudson version of "Memory" and the Lloyd Webber/Taylor Swift "Beautiful Ghosts".

Recordings wise, I think all of the English ones are worth hearing, because the London is the original, the Broadway is Broadway and is closer to the stage musical, with changes to the songs "Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer" and "Growltiger's Last Stand" ("Billy McCaw" is dropped and it's now a Puccinian love duet), and the Australian is possibly the closest recording we have to the original show. The 1998 DVD unfortunately doesn't have a CD, but if you can make your own, I'm sure you’ll enjoy it. The movie soundtrack at this point, for me, seems to be a fascinating historical document—something that appalled Andrew Lloyd Webber so much he went out and bought a dog for the first time in his life. I can't comment on the non-English recordings since I haven't heard them.

Why do I think "Cats" became one of the most commercially successful and enduring musicals of all time? Could it have had something to do with the music, T.S. Eliot's poetry, the direction, the choreography, the design, the performances, the orchestrations, the advertising??? Yes, but I would also argue that there must be a lot of cat lovers.

Thank you for reading,

Ryan.