Andrew Lloyd Webber

Cats

The Musical CATS, with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber is based on the 1939 poetry collection Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot. It became Lloyd Webber’s third great success, after the musicals Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita. He began setting Eliot’s poems to music in 1977, and the compositions were first presented as a song cycle in 1980. Producer Cameron Mackintosh then recruited director Trevor Nunn and choreographer Gillian Lynne to turn the songs into a complete musical. CATS became one of the longest-running shows in West End and Broadway history. It received its world premiere at the New London Theatre in 1981, where it played for 21 record-breaking years and almost 9,000 performances. The following year, CATS opened at New York’s Winter Garden Theatre, its home for the next 18 years, garnering seven 1983 Tony Awards, including Best Musical. The show returned to Broadway in 2016, where it had a successful pre-tour run at the Neil Simon Theatre. CATS has been presented in over 30 countries, translated into 16 languages, and seen by more than 73 million people worldwide. Lloyd Webber’s magnificent musical score includes the poignant hit song Memory, which has been recorded by over 150 artists, from Barbra Streisand to Liberace to Barry Manilow. It took 7,486 chandelier crashes for Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera to take over from CATS as the longest-running show in Broadway history in January 2006.