Cats – The Shows Must Go On YouTube Channel.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
The seven-week trawl through the Andrew Lloyd Webber back catalogue on the noble lord’s free The Shows Must Go On YouTube channel came to an end at the weekend with his big 1981 hit which ran for 21 years in the West End and made fortunes around the globe.
The condensed version viewers saw – coincidentally also shown on Sky Arts the following day – was all the better for being 45 minutes shorter than the original.
Shot from 18 performances at the Adelphi in the summer of 1997 and directed by David Mallet, it slotted nicely into a two-hour TV slot and the cast was much changed, as you would expect after a 16-year run at that stage. Only Elaine Paige as the shabby old grey cat Grizabella and Susan Jane Tanner as Jellorum remained.
John Mills, then 90, was drafted in to play Gus The Theatre Cat, once a famous actor but now suffering from the palsy with shaky hands and memory. A poignant performance, all the more so now that he’s gone, albeit after a wonderful innings of 97.
Sir John was the only newcomer, the rest having appeared in later productions in the West End, on tour or around the world.
Ken Page, the first wise Old Deuteronomy on Broadway, commanded his big scenes, fellow Big Apple star Jacob Brent was Magical Mr Mistoffelees and John Partridge, long before he became the gay-hunk boyfriend in EastEnders or won Celebrity Masterchef, danced and acted Rum Tug Tugger beautifully.
For years I was, well, catty about Cats and stubbornly resisted the show which sent 8,949 West End fans, 7,485 on Broadway and millions more worldwide home ecstatic.
The 11 o’clock number ‘Memory’ with words hastily composed by the distinguished director Trevor Nunn after Tim Rice’s lyrics were rejected as too depressing, was a huge triumph for Paige and later Streisand, and then there was Gillian Lynne’s award-winning choreography and John Napier’s spectacular set and costumes.
Yet despite being a lifetime cat-lover who had owned and bred 27 of them, I just didn’t fancy a musical where humans pranced about in furry catskins in a musical interpretation of TS Eliot’s whimsical poems about feline sociology and where the slinky ones even came down to stroke and purr at members of the audience.
Admittedly, my favourite father-and-daughters photo, in front of me now, is of the girls at three and five sitting on my knee joining in with one-time pop star Paul Nicholas on the annoyingly catchy ‘Mr Mistoffelees’ from the 1980 TV song-cycle pilot.
But I just didn’t get it. The Jellicle Ball and the Heaviside Layer in the cat haunts of 1930s London? And names like Macavity, Growltiger, Rumpleteazer, Skimbleshanks? What was that all about?
When I finally saw it, worst fears were realised: at over two and a half hours it was too long, the best songs mostly came in a bunch near the end and it took an age to get to them, the story wasn’t much cop and the dancing, exciting though some of it was, went on and on. I wasn’t alone. My now grown-up daughter was not the only one yawning.
Last year’s Cats movie, much altered under Tom Hooper’s direction with a new song, ‘Beautiful Ghosts’, by Taylor Swift that should have encouraged the younger generation, Judi Dench as a female Old Deuteronomy, and some thrilling dancing by Royal Ballet stars Francesca Hayward and Steven McRae but an excruciating Grizabella from Jennifer Hudson and a wasted James Corden, did little to change my mind although it wasn’t quite the car crash the film critics led us to believe.
But, third time lucky, in the shortened made-for TV version, the storyline became clearer and with the Lloyd Webber melodies lusher than ever under a massive orchestra conducted by Simon Lee, I’ll hold my hand up and say I wouldn’t even mind sitting through it again.
While grateful for (most of) the seven shows – six musicals and one Royal Albert Hall concert – we did see, it would have been interesting to re-view The Beautiful Game and Stephen Ward, both all but forgotten and the latter never forgiven.
Yes, it was a bad title – few under 40s knew the name Ward or how he was stitched up by the government in the Profumo Affair – but it was a great story and good-time girl Mandy Rice-Davies’ “well, he would, wouldn’t he?” classic riposte when cross-examined at Ward’s trial about Lord Astor denying sleeping with or even meeting her is in our language forever.
Jeremy Chapman
- The Lloyd Webber season has raised half a million dollars for The Actors Fund so it’s a big thank you from them and from us.
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