Cats- It's Reception Then And Now

[Soaring29]

Cats is one of the most ridiculed shows there is nowadays, even hated- Now it may seem ridiculous, but the show is actually pretty good IMO. I know it was considered groundbreaking at the time, but why do you think that was? It  was such a long running success, but then what made people lose their respect for it over the years? Were people just sick of it? Why did Phantom Of The Opera, another ALW show, outlast it's run on Broadway and become the longest running Broadway show in history and it did not? 

[BroadwayConcierge]

Phantom is dramatically engrossing, musically gorgeous, and even emotional at times. Cats has one standout number and the rest is nonsensical gibberish.

[NOWaWarning]

I feel like the people who don’t respect it now never respected it. I don’t think the ratio of people who hate it and love it has really changed over the years.

[Soaring29]

Do you think Phantom will ever close? I knew it would make it to 30 years, but do you really think it will make it to 40? Seems crazy, but then again, it will be running on the West End for 32 years this year and Les Miserables will be running for 33 years on the West End this year. Les Mis will probably make it to 40, but it just seems crazy that Phantom has been on Broadway THIS LONG with no sign of leaving, lol. 

[Loopin’theloop]

CATS was the first British dance musical and did an enormous amount for jazz dance in the UK. There was so little of it happening in original British musicals and Gillian Lynne fought, quite rightly so that the brits could hold their own against we Americans. The success of the show then had a major influence on dance training in musical theatre.

[CATSNYrevival]

People love to hate Cats. It’s an easy target. It was considered groundbreaking at the time perhaps partly because it was so unusual. A fanciful dance musical based on a book of poems about cats set in a junkyard. It shouldn’t have worked but it did! It works less successfully now, in my opinion, due in some part to the changes that were made for the revival.

The plot is light, but it does have a detailed through line narrative if you choose to look closely enough. It’s very much a concept show similar to Hair and A Chorus Line. T.S. Eliot had apparently drawn up "sketches" for the purpose of using and incorporating the poems into an evening and I've always been impressed that Webber, Nunn and Lynn were able to construct an evening of musical theatre, after Eliot's death, with the ban that the Eliot estate put on the inclusion of original material. They were forced to create a plot using the unpublished poems of Grizabella, Eliot's "Rhapsody on a Windy Night" and fragments based on two phrases:

"Jellicle cats come out tonight, Jellicle cats come one come all. The Jellicle moon is shining bright, Jellicles come to the Jellicle Ball".

and the unpublished idea of Eliot's that a cat would eventually travel "Up, Up, Up past the Russell Hotel. and "Up, Up, Up to the Heaviside Layer".

It’s a story of redemption and acceptance that ends up being an important topic for discussion from a show that is often considered to be a children's musical with no plot.

[Soaring29]

Completely agree- Cats most certainly has a story, I've always been aware of that. 

[Loopin’theloop]

CATS is very much of its time and it needs to be enjoyed as such. Much like A CHORUS LINE if you start tampering with the work to make it less period, then you start pulling at thread after thread and you might as well make a new show. It works as a delightful, energetic fantasy wrapped in an 80’s ribbon.

As you guys have just said, people love to hate on it and it’s a shame that it’s contribution hasn’t been fully recognised, even in the UK.

However the choreographer Dame Gillian Lynne is being recognised by having a theatre named after her and is the first woman in the West End (also first choreographer) to do so. So that’s something.

[quizking101]

Soaring29 said: "Do you think Phantom will ever close? I knew it would make it to 30 years, but do you really think it will make it to 40? Seems crazy, but then again, it will be running on the West End for 32 years this year and Les Miserables will be running for 33 years on the West End this year. Les Mis will probably make it to 40, but it just seems crazy that Phantom has been on Broadway THIS LONG with no sign of leaving, lol."

PHANTOM has reached such unprecedented heights in musical theatre history that it has no comparable peer it can be judged against. I think guessing when it might close is foolish because it could burn money probably for a good long while before it opts to close. It has a well established pattern of when it’s lean weeks are and when it’s high earning weeks are 

[Lot666]

Andrew Lloyd Webber is my favorite musical theatre composer, but Cats is not among my favorites of his work. However, I derive no pleasure from bashing or ridiculing the show, while many others clearly do. 

It eventually becomes "cool" to hate anything that reaches an extraordinary degree of notoriety in popular culture, which Cats certainly did back in the 80s. Whenever something attains "must-have", "must-see", or "must-do" status in the public consciousness, the backlash usually begins shortly thereafter. 

Similarly, many people love to bash Phantom because its not reflective of the latest trends in musical theatre. I know people who camped out for Phantom tickets and played the cast recording relentlessly when the show first opened; today, they laugh at my love for it. Shows like The Lion King and Wicked, while much newer than Phantom and still enormous revenue generators, are already frowned upon by the Broadway intelligentsia who will cheer the inevitable descent of these shows into the land of the "uncool".

15-20 years from now, what do you think the same people will say about Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen?

[BrodyFosse123]

First and foremost, before touching on the material itself, the one reason CATS because such a huge sensation in the early 80s was due in part to its staging.  Both the New London Theatre (for the original 1981 London production) and the Winter Garden Theatre (for the 1982 original Broadway production) were gutted and turned into a semi-in-the-round theatre.  The orchestra pits were removed (the orchestra was hidden in the wings of each theatre) and the stages blended with the theatre floor.  Trap doors were created in between the audience's seats so the cat performers would exit and make entrances in random areas of the theatre during the performance.  Also, enormous pieces of "junk" pieces were placed throughout the entire theatre so when you walked into the theatre, you felt like you were entering the world of the cats.  You were seeing the show thru a cat's point-of-view.  The interactive nature of the staging took what was an almost plotless musical into a refreshingly new theatrical experience.  It wasn't just only on the stage but in your seat as well.  

Sadly, this elaborate staging wasn't possible in the theatres where the touring productions played so many assumed the tour was how the show looked on Broadway (or London).  In a regular proscenium theatre with an orchestra pit you did not get the same experience as you would have on Broadway or in London for all the obvious reasons.  You DID see CATS but you did not experience CATS.  

Audiences returned numerous times to see CATS at the Winter Garden Theatre (and the New London Theatre) due to the experience it was.  Entering that theatre and entering the world of CATS was something to be seen and word-of-mouth was more about that than the actual show itself.  You got your money's worth all around.  This kept the tourists coming back to it for 18 years on Broadway.  





 

[Armie3]

I think back then it had genuine merit what with its original staging and going out on a limb artistically.

The problem now is that it is just a cash cow for Really Useful Company and has no integrity anymore.

[Mister Matt]

Its

[Shh_413]

All I know is that Roy Cohn really disliked "Cats". :)

[Impossible2]

It is still the worst experience I have ever had in a theatre in over 40 years of theatre going.

As for now, I'd rather sit at home brushing my hair with a potato peeler than ever put myself through it again.

 

[newintown]

I don't remember anyone calling it "groundbreaking" when it opened in the US in 1982. Even then, the common consensus among people (in my world) was that it was pretty much lowbrow, mindless tripe. But the tourists went ape**** for it. They could bring the kids and not worry about paying attention.

It won the Tony awards that year for Best Musical, Book, and Score, but its only real competition was My One and Only (Blues in the Night, Merlin, A Doll's Life, and Seven Brides were all ignored flops).

[Someone in a Tree2]

At the time of its Bway premiere, it was clear that it was a mindless show with a few really great tunes, swell set design, and a delivery system that would work amazingly well for folks who don't speak English , i.e. foreign tourists. Not a single theater goer I knew then thought anything more of it, and many thought much less. But it was the shiny new object in an abysmal year.

[newintown]

I remember it as a sad time; the classic American book musical seemed to be dying or dead. The Sondheim/Prince era ended with the flop of Merrily, Strouse and Kander/Ebb and Jerry Herman hadn't had a hit in awhile, and producers were trying to improve profits by offering tiny cheap shows (is there life after high school?, Musical Chairs, Black Patent Leather Shoes, etc.) that rarely ran more than a few months. There was an occasional glimmer of hope (Dreamgirls, Nine), but the Lloyd Weber/Rice bookless spectacle that began with Evita appeared to have become the new paradigm - and why not? No book, no need to have more than a vestigial story, so much easier for the booboisie to follow (or not, as many chose).

[CATSNYrevival]

What exactly is lowbrow? Certainly not the T.S. Eliot poetry, I hope.

[newintown]

Yes, Eliot wrote Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats - but it was as mere light entertainment for his godchildren, not what he would have called a "serious" or "adult" work, like The Waste Land or The Cocktail Party. And as a children's book of whimsical verse (like A.A. Milne's), it's very charming. But when set to treacly foursquare music, with adults prancing feyly about in fuzzy costumes, and with a strange grand/happy ending tacked on, it morphs into something distinctly less than Eliot's simple book.

I think that if one can't immediately recognize the "lowbrow" quality of Cats, there's no way to explain it. And, of course, "lowbrow" isn't always pejorative. In this case, though, I think it is.

[CATSNYrevival]

I understand that part of it, the look and spectacle elements of the show can be seen as lowbrow, but the poetry itself, even as verse written for children, has never struck me as being lowbrow. It reads as if he was writing for some pretty intelligent children. That's what I was seeking to clarify. And there is additional poetry worked into the show including The Moments of Happiness and Rhapsody on a Windy Night for Memory. Even the unpublished work for Grizabella with references to Tottenham Court Road which for Eliot would have been a prostitute district, I imagine, wasn't written with children in mind.

[ggersten]

Cats served as a gateway show for my daughter who watched the VHS tape numerous times.   

I'm with BrodyFosse - I first saw Cats in SF from the balcony and was bored - the dancing was fine but nothing spectacular.  But, due to a promise to my daughter, we saw Cats at the Winter Garden and it was a totally different experience. There, it was fun and exciting and involving.  Years, later, went to a touring production in a sports arena with an inflatable set.  And, it was not a great experience.  

[Soaring29]

Balcony seats just aren't a satisfying experience for me- Quality over quantity. 

 

I enjoyed it quite a bit as a kid as a well- the film version is spectacular and I think the show's score is highly impressive as is the dancing.