Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 117

AMUSEMENTS AMUSEMENTS AMUSEMENTS 'Cats': Hit feline musical has London purring By Richard Christiansen Critic at large ONDON Somewhere, in whatever Valhalla there may be reserved for the great poets, T.S. Eliot no doubt is smiling. CivtAAn iraorfl off at Ym tnoth finI imoro LKEr; 111th EPiIlglS Thur. 1 OCT. 13- Sun.

1 HOV. 1 Wed. KOVi HOV. 15 after lie received the Nobel Prize for literature, he -has become, quite unexpectedly, the author of the biggest, splashiest, peppiest and most glittering musical of the year in London. Eliot, that most unglitfering of poets, is remem- bered today through such masterpieces as "The Wasteland" and "Four Quartets" and through such gloomy reminders to the 20th Century that "April is i the cruellest month" and that the world will end "not INTERNATIONAL "ADJACENT AMPHITHEATRE PARKING" TAKE TIN-STATE TOLIWAT 00 KENNEDY EXP WAY TO O'HARE EXIT.

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11) 2:30 ft 7:30 PM M. Kiti. zi ni NO PfRfORMANCES MONDAYS Tlw. (OCT. 22 ft 291 10:30 AM ft 7:30 PM OJOTOJJJWEJJJONDAJ A CHIT $2.00 ON CHILDREN UNDER II $7.50 MCE MCLUOEt $1.50 TAX $5.50 J6.50 ALL SEATS RESERVED STARRED PERFORMANCES Klinill ATSTA -TICKETS MSAIE- R0SEM0NT HORIZON SOX OFFICE AMPHITHEATRE MX OFFICE with a bang, but with a whimper." However, "Cats," the extravagant new musical, is based largely on a very small, slight, and light Eliot work, first published in 1939 under the title of "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats." The musical's creators have drawn some of their inspiration from cat-type poems in other Eliot volumes.

They have tucked in a few lines of their own, and thanks to Eliot's widow, Valerie, they have added a previously unpublished work on a forlorn, somewhat more grim creature called "Grizabella the Glamour Cat." But by and large this "Cats" comes from IS little poems about cats that Eliot wrote for his godchildren and other youngsters under- the name of "Old Possum." In current theater parlance, "Cats" is "a concept musical." which is to say that it has no story line, no What it does have, using Eliot's poetry as lyrics, is 33 musical numbers written by Andrew Lloyd Webber, composer of "Jesus Christ Superstar" i and "Evita," and staged with all-out energy and flash I by Trevor Nunn, director of the Royal Shakespeare MM. ftra Fri. 11 AM to 7 PM ft SM Htm to PM) (Mm. Mr. SM, 1ft AM to I PM) tOTN HORIZON MPHITWATM TICKETS AIAIIAIIE AT: ALL TICKETRON OUTIETS (Induct SEARS.

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Ill MOOT, CMUM, K. tOCM 1 1 HOT 1 1 Min wmm rm mm vtmm conventional show. It was important that the audience should think, immediately upon entering the space, that they had arrived in cat territory." "We had songs and a concept and, with the Grizabella poem, a climax," adds Mackintosh. "After Trevor showed me the design for the setting that he and Napier had we were totally committed to that design. Next, we had to set about trying to find a theater." The theater Nunn wanted was the New London, a house in the West End on Drury Lane that had been created in 1971 by the brilliant English stage designer Sean Kenny.

A flexible, arena-style audito-" rium with revolving stage, it was well-suited to Napier's needs. But the building had never housed a. successful musical, and in recent years it had been used as a television studio and as a site for business conferences, bringing in a steady income that the owners were loathe to give up for the high risk of a musical about cats. In October, 1980, however, the theater was signed up, and the producers, Mackintosh and Webber, spent about $900,000 getting it in shape for their musical. Parts of the house were reconstructed, seats were torn out and transferred to the turntable (thus allowing ads for the show to caution customers that "latecomers will not be admitted when the auditorium Js in Further complications occurred in rehearsal when Judi Dench, the splendid classical actress who had appeared in 1976 in Nunn's marvelous musical comedy version of Shakespeare's "The Comedy of Errors" at the RSC, snapped a tendon and had to withdraw.

Her role eventually was reshaped for Elaine Paige, who had been the original "Evita" in London. "Cats" opened at the New London on May 11, with a top ticket pegged at about $17.50, approximately half the current admission price of a big Broadway musical. Like "Evita," it has become a phenomenal success, with long box-office lines, stand-by queues, and hordes of ticket hustlers outside the theater each performance. Mackintosh expects to bring the musical to New York under the umbrella of the Shubert Organization in the fall of 1982, a time delay caused by Nunn's occupation with the RSC's move to its lavish new quarters in London's Barbican district in the spring of 1982. No suitable Broadway theater has yet been found, and, in any event, Mackintosh is sure that the -show will have to be newly adapted to whatever performance space is found.

It is a matter of great irony that this highly technical, high-dazzle production, based on a few simple rhyming poems, has become far more commercially successful than any of such major Eliot dramas as "Murder in the Cathedral" and "The -Cocktail Party." The "Cats" creators have managed to establish unity and continuity from these assorted verses by arranging the poems climactically and weaving in and out of the evening a few important cat characters. Paige, slumping about in rags and painfully scooping her high notes, is the show's Grizabella, the' faded glamor cat who sings the show's mournful hit, "Memory." Brian Blessed, a big actor with a booming bass, is "Old Deuteronomy" cat, dressed in spats and tattered finery and presiding over the festivities like a kindly godfather. Paul Nicholas, who appeared in the films of "Tommy" and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club. Band," is "the Rum Turn Tugger," prancing about in black leather like a punk feline.

And Wayne Sleep, a principal with the Royal Ballet, is everything and everywhere for this show as its chief dancer, whether he is tap-dancing in a Busby Berkeleyesque number for "the Old Gumbie Cat" or performing flashy magic tricks as "Mr. Mistoffelees." Lynne's lunging, strutting, clawing choreography eventually runs out of invention; but she, Webber, and Nunn nonetheless have fashioned a surprisingly strong spine for these disconnected poems. So strong, in fact, that the production sometimes overwhelms the playful material. I They open with a progressively exciting "Jellicle Cats" routine, with the cat cast in full cry. They shrewdly spot big production numbers, making ingenious use of elements of Chinese theater for a tale of "Growltiger's Last Stand" against a band of Siamese cats.

And they wind things up with a massive -chorale finale revolving around Eliot's little poem, "The Ad-Dressing of Cats," that finds everybody onstage, singing full-out as if at the end of a Verdi 1 As Eliot ttlmself might cay, perhaps with a wink: "And this la the way the show ends. This is the way the show ends. Not with a whimper, but with a Company. I Spectacularly designed by John Napier, who also collaborated with Nunn in the RSC's fabled stage (adaptation of Charles Dickens' "Nicholas Nickleby," iime snow nas a revolving stage; an umDreua ot 1 1 1 1 I ..11 1 Orchestra Hall has never looked better and that's something to Celebrate! Join in the festivities launching the 91st season of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the opening of newly renovated Orchestra Hall uunMiig ugms unuer a siarry, urn-moon ceuing; a giant railroad engine made of human parts; a billowing fog machine; flash pots; an environmental setting of "a giant cats' playground" made up of larger-than-life garbage cans, old shoes, rags, paper, corrugated iron fence, oil drums, and wheels; and, to top it all off, a huge tire that seems to float halfway up to the ceiling and leads to a stairway that ascends directly to a winking, blinking entrance to pussycat heaven. To fill this mass of special effects, Nunn and choreographer Gillian Lynne enlisted 31 extraordl-nary performers, all dressed in Napier's fantastic feline outfits, who have created what Lynne calls "England's first dance musical." And dance this musical surely does.

There are pirouetting cats, jazz-dancing mice, and even tap-dancing cockroaches, filling the arena stage' with, action and spilling into the aisles to pat, kiss, and sit in the laps of the astounded customers. All this began quite simply in 1977, when Webber, as a kind of composer's mental exercise, put music to Eliot's "cats" poems. They stayed nothing more than a pleasant experience for him until 1980, when he began to think of them as a possible companion piece to a concert work, "Tell Me on a Sunday," that he had presented on BBC television. Webber then contacted Cameron Mackintosh, a suc cessful, 34-year-old producer of revues and musicals Av I) ii il fci Him mi i iimn tm immm London, about the prospects of doing something with the "cats" songs. To further test their potential, he programmed them in a small music festival last summer.

Valerie Eliot came to the festival and was favorably impressed, so much so that she offered them some of Eliot's unpublished works. These in cluded the "Grizabella" poem, which, Webber says, Ticket Prices: Orchestra Hall Box Office per seat 220 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60604 Main FloorRows A-D $30.00, Phone (312) 435-8111' Major Credit Cards accept.4 BalconyFront $50.00. Rear $25.00 American Express.

Visa, MasterCard added a key human dimension to the project and convinced him to go on with the show. Nunn, after several weeks' persuasion by Mackintosh, agreed to make "Cats" his first work on an original musical, and brought him to. the project his colleagues Napier and Nunn, who came to the musical with great admiration for Andrew Lloyd Webber," says bis ukU. nation la staging the show was do In an environment, rather than a theater, because we tasted to make this an experience, rather than a Section 7 5HI6AGO TRIBUNE Arts looks September' 13, 1531'.