At the intersection of Broadway and 50th Street stands the Winter Garden Theater, one of Broadway’s most illustrious and respected theaters. The Winter Garden Theater is home to the longest running Broadway show of all time, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats. Based upon a book of poems by T. S. Eliot’s, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, the show is a fantastical journey with the Jellicle cats named Rum Tum Tugger, Grizabella, Rumpleteazer and others. The poems/songs are based around the simplest of plots, the Jellicle Cats sing and dance while they prepare for the Jellicle Ball, an event at which one of them will be chosen to ascend to the mystical Heaviside Layer.
With a score that includes great numbers like Memory, great lyrics like Gus: The Theater Cat, colorful costumes, sets and enough yak hair and dry ice to pull off any number of suspensions of reality, Cats is an all-around entertaining and engaging time with loads of wisdom tucked deftly between-the-lines of more than a few of the numbers. While one must approach Cats as a light-hearted romp by a group of adults dressed as cats romping through sets composed of enormous pieces of garbage, the combined effects of the score, lyrics, costumes, sets and special effects leave one anything but lightly impacted. Sheer talent alone ensures the success of Cats, with music by Andrew Lloyd Weber, lyrics and book by T. S. Eliot, Trevor Nunn original direction and Gillian Lynne choreography. The show is structured into two acts with approximately a fifteen minute intermission. The first act is entitled “When Cats Are Maddened By The Midnight Dance” which includes twelve numbers. The end of the first act is the show stopping Memory, originally performed by Betty Buckley whose version of the number has become definitive, but performed skillfully if not as well by Linda Balgord in the current cast. The blue lighting, the haunting melody of Memory, the
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