this video is sponsored by CuriosityStream.
hey, welcome to 12tone! about a month ago, the trailer dropped for the Cats movie and
the internet lost its mind.
there was a lot of discourse about it, both from theater kids who knew exactly what to
expect and from newcomers who weren't entirely sure what they were experiencing, but there
was one inescapable conclusion that everyone seemed to agree on: Cats is weird.
it always has been.
lots of people talked about the ways in which it's weird, but I didn't see many people talking
about how it got that weird in the first place, which is sad because the behind-the-scenes
may actually be even weirder than the show itself.
so today I thought I'd take off my music theorist hat for a second, dust off my old musical
theater hat, and tell you all the story of how this plotless, chaotic, beautiful nightmare
of a show became, at the time of its closing, the longest-running musical in the history
of both the West End and Broadway, and why, in spite of everything, I think it just might
deserve it.
so buckle up, 'cause we're gonna talk about Cats.
(intro sequence)
let's start with the part that most theater fans know: Cats is based primarily on a book
of poems by T.S.
Eliot called Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. originally written as letters to his
godchildren, Eliot's series of whimsical cat poems was eventually collected and published
in 1939. he was pretty concerned about how the book would be received: he was, after
all, known as a fairly serious poet, with critically renowned works like The Waste Land,
which explores the realities of death and post-war disillusionment, and Ash Wednesday,
written after his conversion to Anglicanism, which deals with the question of how someone
who hasn't always been faithful can still achieve salvation. and then he published a
goofy book of cat poems full of names like Bustopher Jones, Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer,
and The Rum Tum Tugger.
so yeah, kind of a weird swing.
because it was such a departure from what he was known for, Eliot was very careful about
how Old Possum was crafted. he wanted to make sure they were all initially published as
a single collection, because, in his words, "one by itself looks rather silly, whereas
a number together might appear to have some reason for existence."
the initial plan had been to have a character called the Man in White Spats narrate a series
of poems about cats and dogs, describing both societies before eventually they all come
together and rise up in a balloon, up to the Heaviside Layer, which as a kid I thought
was just, like, the name of a cool hangout spot, but apparently it's a real part of Earth's
Ionosphere, starting about 90 kilometers above sea level.
so, uh… yeah, they were gonna die. after going back and forth with his publisher for
a couple years, they eventually decided to abandon the dogs and the Man with White Spats
and just focus solely on the cats portion.
thus, Old Possum was born.
but how did it become a musical?
well, this is the part of the story that usually gets glossed over.
for example, here's how my friend Patrick Willems described it in his Cats video: (PATRICK:
then, around 1980, Andrew Lloyd Webber decided to put Eliot's words to music, and turned
it into the musical Cats.) now, in Patrick's defense, his video was about the movie, so
this was a perfectly good summary for the point he was trying to make, but it turns
out that, if you really want to know how we got from Old Possum to Cats, it's gonna take
a bit more than one sentence.
seriously, though, Patrick's video is great, there's a link in the description.
but our story begins during technicals for Evita.
Evita, it's worth noting, was a fairly serious play detailing the life of Eva Perón, the
former first lady of Argentina.
it was a critical darling, receiving all sorts of awards for its story, its score, and its
performances, and showstopping numbers like Don't Cry For Me Argentina made it a huge
hit with audiences as well.
in fact, it's another one of the longest-running shows in West End history.
Webber has a lot of those.
but no matter how good the show is, technicals, the part of the rehearsal process focused
on dialing in things like sound and lighting cues, can be pretty dull for a composer, so
Webber was looking for something to distract himself.
that's when he was approached by actress Jennie Linden, who was developing a show called I
Say, I Play for the Sydmonton Festival, a small annual arts festival Webber hosts on
his estate at Sydmonton Court.
Linden wanted to do a series of poems set to music, and she wondered if Webber would
be interested in composing something for it.
he agreed, largely because it seemed like an interesting challenge: up to that point,
he'd mostly worked with lyricist Tim Rice, and their approach had been to agree on a
basic dramatic structure, after which Webber would write the music and then Rice would
fill in the words later.
Webber had never really tried writing music to pre-existing lyrics before, and he was
curious to see if he could.
but first, he'd have to figure out which poems he was going to use, and this is where Old
Possum comes back into the story.
it had been a childhood favorite of Webber's, and he also remembered that many of the poems
featured, in his words, "irregular and exciting meter" which lent itself well to musical composition.
he ultimately set four of Eliot's poems to music: The Naming of Cats, The Song Of The
Jellicles, Mr. Mistoffelees, and Macavity.
so yeah, Cats started its life as basically just a songwriting exercise because Webber
was bored in rehearsals.
from there, though, he went back to working on Evita, and moved the cat songs to the backburner.
he'd play them occasionally for friends, but the next real plan was for them to serve as
what's called a curtain-raiser for another of his works, Variations.
a curtain-raiser is a theater term for a short, usually light-hearted performance that goes
before a bigger, more serious show: think the animated shorts that play in front of
most Pixar movies.
Variations was an instrumental piece based on a theme by Niccoló Paganini, and he was
getting offers to turn it into a dance show, so naturally Webber felt that the obvious
pairing to this serious reimagining of a famous classical theme was some goofy cat songs.
as far as I can tell, this is where the idea came from to have the cats dance.
but they never actually served as a curtain-raiser, because soon after that, Webber met lyricist
Don Black, and the two of them came up with an idea for a one-woman show called Tell Me
On A Sunday, about an English girl who travels across the United States looking for love.
between working on that and managing Evita's U.S. premiere, Webber was strapped for time,
so he shelved the Variations project, and with it, Practical Cats, as the show was called
at the time.
Tell Me On A Sunday wound up being made into a TV special by the BBC, and its success would
ultimately lead directly to Cats as we know it today.
you see, Tell Me wasn't really a play, it was more of a song cycle: a series of compositions
designed to be played together, thematically connected but without much underlying narrative
structure.
it was just a series of events, and with the encouragement of veteran producer Cameron
Mackintosh, Webber wondered if maybe Practical Cats could be the same thing: a full-blown
show, setting all of Eliot's poems to music, but without any real plot, just a bunch of
fun little cat vignettes.
that's right, musical was his third idea for what to do with these songs, and we still
haven't got to the part where the show gets a story.
that was a problem for the future, though: before this went any further, they needed
permission.
Old Possum wasn't public domain: you couldn't just adapt it into a stage show without the
approval of Eliot's estate, which was managed by his widow, Valerie, so Webber met with
her and invited her to the Sydmonton Festival, where she could see what he'd done so far
and decide if she'd let him proceed.
as it turns out, she was interested, and she brought along a series of unpublished cat
poems that had been left out of the book for one reason or another.
these contained two main revelations for Webber: the first was Eliot's planned balloon story,
which gave the show something to build toward, and the second was a poem called Grizabella
the Glamour Cat, about a cat who had once been a beauty queen but was now old, mangy,
and ignored.
it had been cut from the book for being too sad, but it gave Webber a real, sympathetic
figure to build around, and the final shape of Cats began to form.
meanwhile, they had started filling out their production team: Mackintosh had brought superstar
choreographer Gillian Lynne to the Festival show, and she quickly agreed to join the project.
harder, though, was their director: Valerie Eliot still wasn't fully on board, so they
needed a big name in order to really sell it to her.
with that in mind, they approached Trevor Nunn.
now, a brief aside on Nunn: he was, at the time, the artistic director for the Royal
Shakespeare Company, which is about as big a deal as the name makes it sound.
he worked in high-end, serious theater, and had never done anything commercial, certainly
nothing at all like Cats, but for some reason, he agreed.
he still had one major concern, though: the plot.
specifically, the fact that there was none.
that's right, it took this long for someone to suggest that maybe, just maybe, the show
could use some semblance of a story, so Webber and Nunn went back through Eliot's poems and
developed the concept for the Jellicle Ball, where the Jellicle Cats make the Jellicle
Choice and yeah, it's still paper-thin, but at least it's kind of a plot. if you want
a better summary, though, check out Patrick's video: I've got a lot more trainwreck to cover.
anyway, the next problem that had to be solved was the theater: set designer John Napier
wanted to build a massive, immersive junkyard that spilled out into the crowd, but in most
theaters in the West End, the layout made that impossible.
they'd need a very special theater in order to accomplish their vision.
after months of searching, Webber wound up finding the perfect venue by accident, when
he appeared on a reality show called This Is Your Life, filmed in the New London Theater.
it had everything they were looking for, it even had a turntable for the seats so they
could move the audience around during the show, but there was one problem: it wasn't
really a theater anymore.
the owners had tried to make it one, but after numerous productions there failed, they decided
to cut their losses and build a business renting the space out to TV shows and conventions
instead, and they were worried that if they let another show open there, it might take
them off the market for too long and they'd lose the business they'd built.
but Webber was insistent, and fortunately for him, his old friend Bernard Delfont served
on the board of the theater, and together they worked out a very peculiar deal.
basically, Delfont's reasoning was this: if the show failed quickly, closing in, say,
less than 3 months, it wouldn't really interrupt their conference business, so it'd be fine
to rent it out at a normal rate.
if, on the other hand, the show was a big hit, running for 2 years or longer, that would
mean they were succeeding as a theater again, in which case it'd also be fine to rent it
out at a normal rate.
the problem came if it was a small hit, crawling its way through a year or so and then closing,
so Delfont proposed that, if the show ran longer than 3 months but less than 2 years,
Webber and company would pay a penalty of 200,000 pounds, which in today's money is
around a million dollars.
Webber immediately agreed.
I'm gonna give that a moment to sink in, because this, I think, is the moment that Cats lost
any incentive to be normal.
all they could do was swing for the fences.
the show could be a catastrophic flop or it could be a spectacular success, but contractually
speaking, they could no longer afford for it to be just decent.
no one in the company had that kind of money just sitting around, so if the show was ok,
it would be a disaster.
they had to go big, or they might have to mortgage their homes, so whatever Cats was
gonna be, it might as well go all in.
but they weren't really sure yet what it was gonna be, because the show was still incomplete:
Nunn felt that, among other things, it lacked an emotional center, a powerful tear-jerker
like Don't Cry For Me Argentina.
Webber suggested repurposing a song he'd written for an abandoned play about opera composer
Giacomo Puccini, which would eventually become Memories, but they had no lyrics yet.
Webber first reached out to Don Black, but his submission was rejected.
Nunn tried to do it himself, eventually deciding to adapt another Eliot poem called Rhapsody
On A Windy Night, but he was taking too long to do it so Webber and Mackintosh brought
in Tim Rice to help complete it.
Nunn rejected Rice's lyrics as well for being too sad, but they were out of time, so they
had to use a hybrid version to start.
it wasn't until well into previews that the lyrics for the most important song in the
show were actually finalized, and even then it only happened because Rice threatened legal
action if they didn't stop using his version.
and this is leaving out all the drama of the rehearsal process itself: the musical director
quit on the first day, forcing Webber to bring in Harry Rabinowitz, a film conductor who,
while highly regarded in that world, had never done theater before, to replace him.
Judi Dench, who was supposed to play Grizabella and was one of the biggest stars in the show,
suffered an injury during rehearsals and had to drop out weeks before previews started,
Napier had to throw away 45,000 pounds worth of costumes because, despite being beautiful,
they were impossible to dance in, and besides Memories, lots of other parts of the lyrics
and the score were incomplete too, relying on improvisation and last-minute magic to
make everything come together.
they even considered pushing back the beginning of previews to give themselves more time to
clean up the mess they were dealing with, and the only reason they didn't was that rumors
were already circling that the show was falling apart and Mackintosh worried that if they
didn't start on time, it'd feed those flames and the rumors would sink the show before
anyone had even seen it.
from start to finish, the making of Cats was complete and utter chaos.
so… why did it work?
I mean, even if you don't personally enjoy the show, it's hard to argue with the results.
and I think the lesson of Cats is this: there's something to be said for just taking a bunch
of really, really talented people and having them all work together to make something truly
ridiculous.
I mean, look at it: T.S.
Eliot is one of the most important poets in American history.
Andrew Lloyd Webber had already proven himself to be a musical powerhouse with works like
Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita.
Cameron Mackintosh was a legendary producer, Trevor Nunn was the artistic director for
the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Gillian Lynne, John Napier, and Harry Rabinowitz were
all at the tops of their respective fields too. and that's to say nothing about the cast,
the musicians, the crew, and everyone else involved in the show.
by all rights, none of these people should have been anywhere near something as incoherent
as Cats, and yet all of them were not only involved but excited about it.
the level of raw talent that went into making Cats is almost as absurd as, well, Cats. they
assembled a super-team, and together they made a spectacle unlike anything the world
of musical theater had seen before, and unlike most of what it's seen since.
it's a celebration of fun over function, and it doesn't care if you take it seriously because
it's playing by rules that only it knows.
so yeah, I love this show, and I can't wait to see the movie.
plus, if it succeeds, we as a society move one step closer to finally seeing Starlight
Express on the big screen.
let's make this happen, people.
I believe in us.
but if you're looking for the story of an even weirder show, CuriosityStream has a great
documentary called Can A Computer Write A Hit Musical? which…
I mean, it's right there in the title, isn't it? check it out: *snap* (NICK: I've just
generated a showtune by my program.
I call my program Android Lloyd Webber.)
(Nathan: Still… gibberish.)
this film follows composer Benjamin Till and lyricist Nathan Taylor as they attempt to
craft a complete musical out of suggestions from different artificial intelligence systems,
including a lyric machine, a composition robot, and even a plot predictor.
together they synthesize all these different computer-generated ideas into one show.
does it work?
well, you'll just have to watch the documentary.
but yeah, it kinda does.
*snap* and CuriosityStream has thousands of other awesome documentaries, covering art,
history, science, and nature.
they've even got originals, with great hosts like David Attenborough and Sigourney Weaver
that you can't find anywhere else.
plus they're offering 12tone viewers a free 31-day trial: all you have to do is click
the link in the description and use the promo code 12tone when signing up!
and hey, thanks for watching, and thanks to our Patreon patrons for making these videos
possible! if you want to help out, and get some sweet perks like sneak peeks of upcoming
episodes, there's a link to our Patreon on screen now.
you can also join our mailing list to find out about new episodes, like, share, comment,
subscribe, and above all, keep on rockin'!