The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats was derived from the 1939 Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot. Webber began developing the material in the late seventies and the show, produced by Cameron Mackintosh, directed by Trevor Nunn and choreographed by Gillian Lynne opened at the New London Theatre in the West End in 1981 and at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway in 1982. The London version ran for 21 years (8,949 performances) and the Broadway one for 18 years (7,485 performances).
I did not see any of those 16,434 performances.
It's not that I don't like cats (the real kind). I love cats. As you may know, I've fed an awful lot of them in my backyard. I just fed Lydia out there, as I've been doing for something like eighteen years now, and I fed others before her. But I've never seen Cats on stage.
Avoiding the British staging was easy since I have never been to the United Kingdom. But avoiding the New York version was also not difficult. When I was in town during those 18 years, I just went to other shows. I was never in Manhattan long enough to see every single show on Broadway, nor did they all interest me. There were always enough shows that seemed more enticing…and since Cats seemed to have permanent residence, it was always a matter of "Well, maybe I'll catch that on my next trip or the one after…" Once its original cast and Betty Buckley had moved on, I had no reason to think, "I'd better see it now."
Eventually, it was like those TV shows that sit unwatched for months — even years — on my TiVo. I was interested enough to have them recorded but not interested enough to watch them so eventually, I deleted them. I walked past the Winter Garden Theatre in New York every trip east for a decade and a half and never felt the slightest urge to buy a ticket. Finally, I suppose I decided, "I guess I'm not interested enough in that." I know I felt that way about touring productions in Los Angeles and, I think, other cities where it was playing when I visited.
Would I have liked it? Hated it? I don't know.
The show got fairly good reviews when it opened. It won many awards, including a Tony for Best Musical. I knew people who saw it and loved it. I also knew some actors of the kind who work in musical theatre who had such affection for real cats that they dreamed of singing and dancing dressed as cats. A few of them did and I didn't go to see them.
The point I'm trying to make here is that it's humanly possible to have absolutely no opinion of Cats. All you have to do is not see it.
I have encountered people who didn't seem to know that. They went because they thought if something is popular enough, you have to purchase a ticket and go. Like it's mandatory or something. A few loved it, a few were indifferent but a fair number of them hated it — and it wasn't just "I didn't care for the show." It was more like, "There is something gravely wrong with humanity if that show exists, let alone is considered a smash hit."
I understand hating someone who harmed your loved ones. I understand hating someone who did something evil to you. I even understand hating a politician who you believe is harming the world and causing people to suffer. I don't think "hating" is a good way to go about it and I honestly don't think I hate anyone or anything unless, of course, it's a salad consisting primarily of finely-shredded raw cabbage with dressing. But I can understand why some people hate.
I just don't understand why anyone would hate a musical comedy the way some people I've encountered hate Cats.
I can think of one guy I met once at a party…I think if you murdered one or both of his parents and then staged a production of Cats, he would be angrier over the latter. He was screaming about how everyone involved in its making should be immediately spayed or neutered. A lady at the same party was convinced that no human being anywhere ever liked it, including the people who voted it Best Musical or bought the tickets to those 16,434 performances. She had not been to see it but, come on. People singing and dancing dressed as cats? How could that not stink?
Or so she felt.
I continued to have no opinion whatsoever of Cats, that show I had not seen. I did though form an opinion of people who couldn't shut up about how much they hated it, and it was not a favorable opinion…of them.
Fortunately, such talk died down as there were fewer and fewer instances of Cats being performed. But under the heading of "Here We Go Again," they recently made a movie of it.
Is the movie any good? I don't know. Attendance is still not mandatory. My pal Leonard Maltin liked it on the stage but felt much of the magic went away on the screen, though he did recommend it for families and said his wife liked it. Other folks though I see on the 'net are hysterical with rage that it was even made. Many are celebrating that it seems to be a failure at the box office, which as we all know is sometimes the case with movies we love.
You have every right to not like it, especially if you actually gave it a chance and saw it. I might not like it if and when I ever see it…and I might see it. The nice thing about movies in the era of home video is that they never go away. You cannot go now and see the original Broadway production of Cats. As once did not seem possible, it finally closed. But the movie will always be around and it will be exactly the same if I watch it twenty years from now. But I may get to it a lot sooner.
This is the time of year when my mailbox is full of "screener" copies of new film releases. Cats hasn't shown up yet but it still might…and there will always be the option of buying it or renting it or streaming it or whatever way Hollywood next invents to sell us movies. I'm thinking I may bring Lydia in from the back yard to watch it with me.