That kind of reminds me of that Simpsons bit where Bart and Milhouse see Cats while they’re on their slurpie high and they’re totally tweaking out as the cats dance around them. What the hell is hide and cat slap? Do I want to know?
And as for ugly cats…yeah. http://imhere8128.up.seesaa.net/image/Grizabella5B15D.jpg She looks like a bear-mouse thing, not a cat!
Too late to edit, but the Rum Tum Tugger seemed to be channeling Mick Jagger. Or at least trying to. But you know, he really reminds me of Flashheart from Blackadder. For WOOF! read MROW!
So when many here (including many self confessed musical theater lovers) hate it and those who don’t rarely say it’s their favorite musical, what do you think accounts for its phenomenal success? It shattered box office records (since broken) and ran for decades even though it was frightfully expensive to produce.
I read an account of a man who invested approximately $1,500 (he was English so it was in pounds obviously) when ALW was having trouble financing it and has since put his kids who weren’t born then through college with his earnings from his share.
Hide and cat slap =
Cat hides behind seats, until Other Cat pokes her nose over, whereupon Cat slaps Other Cat… who then hides behind seat until Cat pokes nose over, etc.
We thought it was a quite good riff on cat behavior, really. Inasmuch as one of a cat’s few thoughts seems to be “hmmm, what is this, perhaps I should use Claws on it? smack” (Loathsome little creatures, cats. Yea, dogs!)
I liked it when we saw it one hot summer night when a travelling tour came and played at the civic center downtown. It was a Family Outing - me, hubby, and our 8 year old, to expose her to some ‘culture’. We had a great time, but other than “Memory” I don’t recall much else that knocked my socks off. I guess you either love ALW or you don’t.
First, when Cats opened, the effects and stage show were truly unique on Broadway. Second, it is a very family friendly show – perfectly appropriate for, and indeed most enjoyable for, small children. Tourists traveling with their kids want to take in a show when they’re in New York and most broadway productions are rather a bit much for the under 12 crowd.
When Lion King came along it knocked Cats off its perch as the go-to for the 2.4 children set. That wasn’t until 1997 – only 3 years later, Cats closed. Nowadays Broadway is very family-oriented, but it wasn’t so in 1982 when Cats opened.
The show fills me with a great and lasting sense of indifference.
It’s not bad, but it’s also not great. Andrew Lloyd Weber has done better, as has T.S. Eliot.
I saw it oncet, so I don’t have any reason to see it again. But then, I’d prefer rewatching it than most of Stephen Sondhiem’s dreck. At least Lloyd Weber knows how to occasionally write a decent song.
I love the poetry in and of itself. I didn’t go expecting to see a play in a sense of story and plot; I went expecting to see, in essence, a very ornate poetry reading. I love the TS Elliot poems, and frequently quote them to my kitties.
I listened (and memorized) the soundtrack for years before I saw the play. I saw each as an individual story, and honestly, I think I prefer the music (and poems) to the musical itself. That said, the musical was great fun. The attempt at plot was lame and unnecessary, though, IMHO.
Does anybody know if Mrs. Eliot got money from the production? (I’d hate to think she sold him the rights for a modest one time payment as from all I’ve read she’s a very nice lady, though it wouldn’t surprise me [who’d think a musical based on a literary figure’s cat poems would be a monster hit?].)
Now, that I could have appreciated, as something that really is distinctively feline, but they didn’t do anything like that in the production I saw (a traveling Broadway troupe).
The best cat performance I’ve seen on stage wasn’t even in Cats at all. Last year I saw our local ballet company’s Nutcracker, and one of the younger dancers (it’s a teaching company, so a spread of ages including children) was given the part of the family housecat. All through the first half (the part set in the house, rather than the dreamland), she’s dancing in, around, and through all the other dancers, apparently without any regard for what anyone else is doing, and with no apparent coordination with anyone else whatsoever. Now, that’s how a cat dances.
I like what the actors have done with the cats over the years. There’re many little asides and shenanigans going on at any given moment, with each individual cat having developed its own personality and interests. Cats-haters who’ve only ever seen the movie really have no idea how complex the relationships have become.
I don’t see the musical as an overblown dance recital, but as a character study. I think that stays true to Eliot’s original.
Tell me you didn’t get a chuckle from people pretending to be cats pretending to be dogs. 
Mmm, not really. I blame *Pippin *for starting the style-over-substance fad that reached its nadir in Cats.
I only saw it once at the New London Theatre in the West End - complete to revolving stage. I saw it with my kids and really enjoyed it. Certainly not the best musical ever but a fun way to spend an evening.
I’ve know the poems since I was seven and given them as a present - I used to be able to recite most of them by heart - and as a family we have always had cats around. It’s true the plot was between non-existent and ridiculous but, hey, there are pretty ladies in skin tight costumes to look at 
I seem to remember something from her in the Playbill for the show, and I certainly have never seen any controversy about her not getting royalties, so I think she did ok.
As for your question, besides the kids angle, there are a lot of foreign tourists in New York. Cats was a perfect play for them to be taken to, since it didn’t require much of a grasp of English to enjoy, having no real plot. We usually took our kids for weekday matinees, and judging from the talk in the lobby there were a lot of German tourists at the show.
Well, I’ve never heard of this show[sup]*[/sup] but from all these descriptions, I can only imagine what a bomb it must have been. Say, how long after opening did it close? Three days, four days? Must have come close to setting some sort of record for “biggest Broadway disaster,” huh?
[sup]*[/sup]A lie, obviously.
This show is the exemplar of Mencken’s maxim that no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
See also, Kiss.
Except it opened in London first.
Mencken’s actual quote, by the way, doesn’t say American, but is more general.
A couple of folks now have mentioned appreciation of women in skintight costumes on stage. While I agree with that in general, I’ve got to say that the body shape you usually see on dancers doesn’t really do much for me.
Two years earlier though Schwartz had written GODSPELL, which is one of my least favorite shows of all time in staging (though I do like several of the songs) for the same reason. A friend of mine described it as looking like “something a 30 year old youth minister would stage to make Jesus look hip to the kiddies bit without the controversial bits from SUPERSTAR”. (Anybody else think it odd that SUPERSTAR used the basic plot of the Gospel of Judas long before it was briefly front page news? I think it inspired JESUS OF NAZARETH’s Judas interpretation earlier.)
I like some of the music from Pippin (particularly GLORY, MORNING GLOW, and SWEET SUMMER EVENINGS) but agree it was too “look at me!” in its staging, and what’s worse is that the college productions I’ve seen take it even further: one was set in a junkyard, another had the (Frankish) war scene set with Vietnam era camouflage and hippie protestors, one version was done all in black leotards, etc…
