The story of Cats is that in the 1930s, the famous poet T.S. Eliot wrote a book of cutesy little cat-themed poems for his godchildren
And then 40 years later, Andrew Lloyd Webber found a lost cat poem that T.S. Eliot had cut from the cat book for being too sad for children, and ALW was like “woahhh. A cat….that’s sad. That’s deep, man. I wanna make a musical out of this”
So the producer assigned to the project was like “okay, I guess you could maybe read these cat poems as a satire of 1930s British society? We could probably do something sort of interesting with that, I’m thinking a cast of about 5 and–”
And ALW was like “no. Forget the satire. Also I want a cast of dozens and the most advanced special effects technology ever seen on stage. I’ve taken out a second mortgage on my house to fund this”
And the producer was like “wh– you– wh– do you even have. a plot”
So ALW got a bunch of actors and writers and artists together and they holed up and did cocaine workshopped for 5 weeks, and at the end of it they emerged and said “the plot is that a bunch of cats are having a dance contest for the right to take a ufo to cat heaven :)”
and then it made 2 billion dollars.
You know how the best genre of rock song is “There’s a Wizard”? CATS is good because it’s two and a half hours straight of “There’s a Cat”, which shares a lot of the same musical DNA.
Though curiously, the “There’s a Cat who is a Wizard” song is actually the worst one in the whole play. It’s not great on its own, but it’s REALLY not done any favors by the song right before it, “There’s a Cat Who Has Done Every Crime Ever And Everyone Is At Least A Little Horny For Him.”
I beg your finest of pardons but the magical Mr. Misstofelees and his song had me in a choke-hold at the age of 8 after we saw it in London (Virgin Airlines was doing a special of $99 tickets to London and my mom was like screw school were going to Europe) and I dressed up as him for Holloween that following year. No, no one knew who I was and yes, everyone argued with me about dressing up as a “boy character.” Man I sang the song thinking it would help people know who I was. Loved him, totally convinced that people also would be at least familiar.
