Cats
Andrew Lloyd Webber's music changes its clothes from poem to poem. He gave each of Eliot's cat poems its own genre, and a single melody of memory threads its way through them all.
At a glance 🔭💭
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The creators ⏳🌊
- ComposerAndrew Lloyd Webber
He set Eliot's cat poems to music and completed “Cats.”
- LyricistT. S. Eliot
The poet behind the original collection; most of the numbers' lyrics come from his verse.
- DirectorTrevor Nunn
He directed the premiere and stitched together Eliot's verse to write the lyrics of “Memory.”
- ProducerCameron Mackintosh
He scraped together the funding to make the London premiere happen.
- LeadElaine Paige
Created Grizabella in the London premiere and was the first to sing “Memory” on stage.
- LeadBetty Buckley
Won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical as Grizabella in the Broadway premiere.
I. From cat poems to the stage
(Source) Cats grew out of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, a slim volume of light verse that T. S. Eliot published in 1939. These cat poems, written for the poet's godchildren, supplied most of the musical's lyrics. It was not a play with a plot but a collection of character poems, each portraying a single cat. (Composer) By then Andrew Lloyd Webber had already written Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita with Tim Rice. Cats was the large-scale work that followed the split with Rice, and setting existing poems to music, rather than new lyrics by a lyricist, was unfamiliar territory even for Lloyd Webber. The poems were first conceived not as a stage show but as a song cycle. (Sydmonton) In 1980, Lloyd Webber first presented the songs at the Sydmonton Festival, the composer's own annual event. Eliot's widow and literary executor, Valerie Eliot, attended and brought along manuscript cat poems that had never appeared in the book. One of them became the thread from which a full musical could be spun. (Creative team) Producer Cameron Mackintosh brought in Trevor Nunn of the Royal Shakespeare Company to direct and Gillian Lynne to choreograph. Raising £450,000 was a struggle, but the show opened on May 11, 1981, at the New London Theatre in London. Mackintosh and Nunn later reunited on Les Misérables, covered earlier in this series, and Mackintosh went on to produce Miss Saigon and Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera.
II. The Jellicle cats
(Darkness) When the curtain rises, a giant junkyard looms before the audience. Cats' eyes glint among heaps of oversized rubbish, and performers come and go through the aisles as well. From the outset, the staging blurred the line between stage and auditorium. (Declaration) In the first number, “Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats,” the cats announce what kind of tribe they are. Clipped phrases pass among many voices before gathering into one. This opening song sets the form: carried almost entirely by song, with scarcely a spoken line. (Names) The next number, “The Naming of Cats,” renders Eliot's poem about a cat's three names almost as recitation. Closer to reading than to singing, the passage has the music step back so the savor of the poem's language comes forward. Here the creators' resolve to stay faithful to Eliot's text shows most clearly. (Purpose) Tonight is the night of the Jellicle Ball, held once a year. When the leader, Old Deuteronomy, arrives, one cat will be chosen to receive a new life. The numbers that follow are a parade of candidates, each taking a turn at self-introduction. That single line is the entire plot. (Introductions) First the old Gumbie Cat, Jennyanydots, opens the proceedings brightly with a song about napping all day for show while teaching the mice and cockroaches by night. Right after, the Rum Tum Tugger whips up the stage with hip-shaking rock. Within the first few songs, the ear catches the work's guiding principle: each cat gets its own genre.
The opening scene, in which the cats gathered in the junkyard introduce their tribe. This song establishes the work's sung-through form.
- Clipped phrases are traded among the cats a bar at a time before gathering into one voice. The sound itself tells how a scattered crowd is bound into a single community.
- The meter is uneven, shifting as if it keeps tripping over itself. It sounds like the unpredictable movements of a cat turned into rhythm.
- Synthesizers and electronic instruments are layered over the orchestra. Lloyd Webber's choice to bring the pop sound of the early 1980s into theater music comes through clearly.
- Heard alongside the staging that has performers emerging from the aisles, the song reveals itself as a doorway drawing the audience into the world of the cats.
A number that paints the contrary, capricious cat as a rock star. Here the work's principle of dressing each cat in a different genre is at its most vivid.
- A rock sound led by electric guitar and drums. The stage swagger of a 1970s rock star is draped straight onto a cat.
- In the London premiere, Paul Nicholas played the role, capturing both a rock singer's bravado and playfulness.
- In the 2014 London revival, the Tugger became a break-dancing street cat and the song turned into a rap. The 2016 Broadway revival reportedly returned to the original version. No number has been reworked more over the years.
III. The ball and the shadow
(Grizabella) Amid the run of cheerful introductions, a cat in a shabby fur coat enters, and everyone turns away. It is Grizabella, the once-dazzling Glamour Cat. The short number about her is written in a mocking tone. This cat came from a manuscript Eliot had left out of the book. (Fragments) Each time Grizabella appears, the melody that will become “Memory” flickers briefly. Only a few bars sound before breaking off, the song not yet unfolding in full. The audience hears these fragments and lets them pass, but from the start the music has marked where the center of this night lies. (Satire) Bustopher Jones, the portly gentleman cat, mimics the pomposity of a London gentlemen's club, and the cat-burglar pair Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer stir up trouble in a nimble duet. Then, when Old Deuteronomy enters, the music turns slow and solemn as a hymn. The hierarchy of cat society is revealed through the weight of the music. (Ball) The high point of Act I, “The Jellicle Ball,” is a long stretch made almost entirely of dance. Gillian Lynne's choreography moves between ballet and jazz dance, while the music strings the same motifs together, changing meter and instrumentation as it goes. Here lies the reason this musical is called a work of dance. (Prelude) After the ball, Grizabella appears again. She sings only the opening of “Memory” before stopping, and Act I closes on that unfinished melody. The music has deferred its answer to Act II.
The high point of Act I, a long dance sequence in which movement outweighs song. It is where Gillian Lynne's choreography and the music interlock most tightly.
- A few short melodic fragments are strung together, changing meter and instrumentation. Because the same material keeps changing shape, the long dance sequence never grows tedious.
- Where the music suddenly stops and then bursts out again, the dancers lock their movements to it. You can tell the music was written to the breath of the dance.
- On the original London cast recording, long dance passages like this one were partly cut to fit the recording. The ball heard in the theater runs longer than on the album.
IV. Stages of yesteryear
(Happiness) Act II opens with a short song in which Old Deuteronomy reflects on moments of happiness. Its lines come from another of Eliot's poems, so it is closer to meditation than to a cat story. With this song, time and memory are set as the themes of Act II. (Gus) Gus the Theatre Cat is old, with trembling paws. The song recalling the days when Gus ruled the stage is slow and tender. It carries the respect that directors and audiences alike hold for a performer long on the boards, and set beside Grizabella, it offers a second way of treating old age. (Recollection) Gus's memories soon spill into a play within the play: the last battle of Growltiger, the pirate cat of the Thames. The original London production used an unpublished Eliot poem for this scene's duet, while the Broadway version replaced it with an aria mimicking Italian opera. It is a passage in which Lloyd Webber deliberately exaggerated a Puccini-style melody. (Train) The mood brightens again with Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat. Skimbleshanks guards the night mail train running north out of London's Euston Station, and the cats rig up a locomotive from scrap on the spot. The music presses forward, insisting on a single rhythm like wheels striking the rails. (Contrast) The numbers in this chapter bear no resemblance to one another. A reminiscent ballad, an opera parody and a train march sit side by side. Instead of a single continuous dramatic plot, the work is built by piling up variety, changing genre as it goes.
An old actor cat recalls glory days on the stage. It lights the Act II themes of time and memory from their tender side.
- A slow tempo and small scoring cradle the old performer's trembling voice. It is a place to catch one's breath among the showier numbers.
- Set this song, which gently honors Gus, beside the Act I song that shuns Grizabella, and two attitudes toward the same old age come into view.
- In the 1998 video version, the veteran actor John Mills played Gus. The actor's real career overlaps with the role, lending the song added weight.
The song of a cat who guards the night mail train. Together with the scene in which the cats build a locomotive out of junk, it breathes fresh life into Act II.
- A steady rhythm, like wheels striking the joints of the rails, runs throughout the song. The repeating rhythm is itself a picture of the train.
- In the refrain, the other cats chime in, calling the name as if they had been waiting for the moment. A solo swells into a chorus of everyone.
- In the passages that keep speeding up, you can feel the train gathering speed. Simply by changing the tempo (speed), the music creates a sense of distance and velocity.
V. The vanished
(Shadow) A siren-like wail suddenly rings across the stage and the cats scatter. Macavity, the master criminal, has appeared. He is the only cat who, on this night, keeps himself an unseen threat. (Blues) Macavity's song is not sung by Macavity himself. Two queens who know him tell, in a low, sultry blues, just how uncannily elusive he is. The music carries over intact the joke of Eliot's poem that the culprit is never at the scene, painting an absent figure in song. (Crisis) In the end Macavity spirits Old Deuteronomy away. With the leader who must choose one cat tonight gone, the ball grinds to a halt. In a work with almost no plot, it is a rare moment of genuine dramatic crisis. (Magic) The rescue falls to the conjuring cat, Mr. Mistoffelees. His number opens with a glittering sound, and the role, created by Wayne Sleep in the London premiere, became famous for its ceaseless spins. The music leaves room for the dance to show off its tricks and even calculates the pauses where applause will break out. (Turn) Mistoffelees's magic sets the ball right again. Yet the commotion is also a sign that the cats' giddy festival is drawing to a close. The stage grows quiet, and all that remains is tonight's choice. Just then, the cat who has been pushed aside all night appears once more.
Two queens who know him sing of Macavity, the master criminal. The hero himself is absent from the stage while they sing.
- A low, sultry blues idiom. Its colors, recalling a jazz-club singer of the 1940s and ’50s, conjure the shady cat's air.
- The music takes up, intact, the joke of Eliot's poem that he is never there. What delights is that an absent character is drawn through a song in which others describe him.
- Two voices alternate, then overlap. It sounds like the cadence of gossip, one speaking while the other chimes in.
- In the latter part the tempo quickens with the dancing, tipping into dramatic commotion. The piece is at once a song and a doorway into the story's crisis.
VI. The song of memory
(Return) Grizabella steps in once more. The melody heard again and again in Act I only in fragments now unfolds to its end. Only then does it become clear that the whole work was woven toward this single song. (Lyrics) The words of “Memory” were written by director Trevor Nunn, who wove them from Eliot's poems “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” and “Preludes.” It is a song of looking back, in a moonlit street, on the beauty of days gone by and waiting for a new day. Unlike the playful cats of the poetry book, Eliot's serious verse enters here. (Leap) The song begins low and quiet. It drifts along like a murmur to oneself, and then, late on, the key rises a step and the voice bursts out in full. It sounds as though feelings long held down are released all at once. (Great performances) Elaine Paige sang it in the London premiere, Betty Buckley on Broadway. Paige's single reached No. 6 on the UK chart in 1981. By 2006 the song is said to have been recorded nearly 600 times. (Choice) When the song ends, Old Deuteronomy at last chooses a cat. Who is chosen is best seen for yourself. But in that moment the music, for the first time, gathers the cats' scattered voices in a single direction.
The melody heard only in fragments all night unfolds to its end in Grizabella's voice. The whole work was woven toward this one song.
- In Act I, each time Grizabella appeared, a few bars of this melody glimmered ahead of her. In effect it served as a leitmotif, a short melody that points to a single character.
- At the late modulation, where the key rises a step, the voice breaks out powerfully. It sounds like the moment long-suppressed feeling bursts free.
- The melody was originally written, deliberately in Puccini's style, for an abandoned Puccini-related project. The broad breath of an Italian opera aria is its trace.
- Elaine Paige in London and Betty Buckley on Broadway are counted the definitive performances. Buckley won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for the role. Recordings by Barbra Streisand and Barry Manilow are also widely known.
VII. The road to the sky
(Ascent) “The Journey to the Heaviside Layer” is the scene in which the chosen cat departs to receive a new life. Orchestra and chorus build higher and higher, and the stage machinery follows that motion. The scattered voices of Act I's opening number here become one great chorus. (Name) The term Heaviside Layer comes from a real layer of the atmosphere named after the British physicist Oliver Heaviside. A scientific term has, in effect, become the name of the cats' heaven. Eliot's brand of intellectual mischief survives even in the final scene. (Salute) In the last number, “The Ad-Dressing of Cats,” Old Deuteronomy speaks directly to the audience. A cat is not a dog, he says, so approach with proper courtesy. The music is dressed as a grand anthem, but the lyrics remain Eliot's light humor. That mismatch keeps the work from ending too heavily. (Record) “Cats” ran for 21 years and 8,949 performances in London, and for 18 years and 7,485 performances on Broadway. On Broadway it became the longest-running show in 1997, a record surpassed in 2006 by the same composer's “The Phantom of the Opera.” At the Tony Awards it won Best Musical and Best Original Score. (Legacy) Its form, flowing by song and dance alone without dialogue, and its structure, with a single song holding the center of gravity from start to finish, became the model for the big West End musicals that followed. In 1998 a filmed version starring Elaine Paige and John Mills was shot at London's Adelphi Theatre, bringing the show to audiences who had never seen it on stage.
The chosen cat departs to receive a new life. The scattered voices gather into one great chorus.
- Chorus and orchestra build layer upon layer. As range and volume rise together, the sound paints an upward motion.
- Earlier melodies are called back and grandly rearranged. The reprise, the same melody sung again, gathers the memories of the night into one.
- Solemn, hymnlike harmonies contrast with the earlier rock·blues numbers. A work that roamed across genres converges at the end on a single style.
Lesser-known stories
(The melody's history) The melody of “Memory” was not written for “Cats.” Lloyd Webber originally wrote it, deliberately in Puccini's style, for an abandoned Puccini-related project. Worried that he might have unwittingly copied some Puccini tune, he played it for his father, who reportedly replied that it sounded like a million dollars. The melody was also nearly used in an early concept for “Sunset Boulevard.” Because the hit has become so inseparable from this show, its history is barely known. (A fork in the lyrics) The song once had other words. Tim Rice wrote and submitted a lyric, but the production chose Trevor Nunn's, woven from Eliot's poems. Nunn finished the lyric only well into previews. The song that became the show's emblem was, in other words, not complete until just before the curtain rose. (The missing poem) Grizabella is a cat absent from Eliot's book. She came from unpublished manuscripts Valerie Eliot brought to Sydmonton, and Eliot is said to have left her out because he thought her too sad for children. A single page the poet discarded became the emotional heart of the show. (Casting by chance) Grizabella and Jennyanydots were originally both to be played by Judi Dench. When Dench withdrew with an injury a week before the first preview, Grizabella went to Elaine Paige and Jennyanydots to understudy Myra Sands. (Two Growltigers) The London and Broadway “Cats” were not the same show. The duet in London's Growltiger scene used an unpublished Eliot poem, but Broadway replaced it with a comic aria parodying Italian opera. The 1998 film cut the scene entirely.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Sung-through
(Meaning) The English sung-through means carried through in song from beginning to end. (In film·musical scores) Unlike musicals that carry the story in dialogue and break into song now and then, it is a style that links nearly every scene through song and music. In “Cats,” with almost no spoken dialogue, the numbers follow hard on one another's heels. Picture telling a friend everything that happened today, start to finish, entirely in rap. With no room for spoken explanation, the music must carry the plot as well.
Number
(Meaning) The English number means a numeral; it came to mean a single piece from the old practice of numbering each piece in a score. (In film·musical scores) A single song in a musical, or a passage built of dance and music, is called a number. In “Cats,” each cat gets a number of its own. It is like a school-concert program listing the order: No. 1, chorus; No. 2, recorder solo. (Elsewhere) In everyday English it simply means a figure or a phone number.
Song cycle
(Meaning) The Korean yeongagok (連歌曲, 'linked songs') means songs (歌曲) that are linked (連). Several songs form a single set. (In film·musical scores) A collection of songs, each setting a separate poem, sung as one set. It has no plot like a drama, but is held together by theme or mood. Lloyd Webber first conceived “Cats” as just such a song cycle. It is like a singer's album in which each track tells a different story, yet the whole album paints a single season.
Leitmotif
(Meaning) The German Leitmotiv means leading (leit) motive (Motiv). A short melody leads the listener to a particular character or idea. (In film·musical scores) A short melody that recurs whenever a particular character, emotion or object appears. In “Cats,” a few bars of “Memory” are heard each time before Grizabella appears. It is like a video game in which the same music always plays just before the boss shows up, so you know who's coming without looking at the screen.
Modulation
(Meaning) The Korean jeonjo (轉調, 'turning the key') means to turn (轉) the key (調). The key, jo, is the note a song is built on, a kind of home for its notes. (In film·musical scores) A technique of shifting the home note mid-song so the whole song is sung again from a higher or lower place. The classic example is the last chorus of a pop song lifting a step as the mood suddenly boils over. “Memory” has such a leap late on. It is the same principle as karaoke, where raising the key a notch for the final chorus suddenly makes it feel more overwhelming.
Reprise
(Meaning) The English reprise comes from the French reprendre, to take up again. (In film·musical scores) Singing the melody of an earlier number again later on. Even the same melody means something different when heard again in a changed situation. In “Cats,” Grizabella's song is sung once more in Act I, and in the final scene the earlier melodies return as well. It is like singing the cheer from the start of field day again at the end: the same song, yet it feels different after the whole day has passed.
Parody
(Meaning) The Greek parodia means a song (ode) sung beside (para). It originally meant a song sung alongside an original in imitation of it. (In film·musical scores) A technique that deliberately exaggerates and mimics a well-known musical style to create laughter or satire. The Growltiger scene in the Broadway “Cats” comically imitates the flamboyant arias of Italian opera. It is like a friend copying a teacher's way of talking exactly, inflating it a little to make the class laugh. (Elsewhere) In film and advertising, too, twisting and imitating a famous scene is called parody.