5 Cats facts: What you didn't know about the musical
04/05/2016
written by Christoph Soltmannowski
The author of Cats was a bank employee
T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot (1888-1965) was an employee of Lloyds Bank of London until the age of 29. During this time he wrote the bestseller "The Waste Land" (1922). Members of the Bloomsbury Group collected money so that he could work as an author. He later received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Cats didn't really have a plot at first
Cats is based on the children's poetry collection "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" by T. S. Eliot. When rehearsals in costume took place, there was no story at all. He had left out the story about the ageing cat Grizabella because he found it too sad. Eliot's widow brought the previously unpublished text to Andrew Lloyd Webber, who used it to construct the framework story.
James Bond's boss should have been a Cats star
Judi Dench, known as James Bond's female boss M, was originally supposed to play Grizabella. However, she injured her Achilles tendon during rehearsals in London - and Elaine Paige stepped in. She even made it into the top ten of the English charts with the song Memory.
Cats is even performed at sea
Cats has been performed on the world's largest cruise ship "Oasis of the Seas" since fall 2014. The floating musical theater on the 361-metre-long ship seats 2161 spectators. On land, Cats is still being performed in five productions 35 years after its premiere - in New York, Paris and Australia. And since April 19, it has also been back in Basel.
String quartet during the interval
At the world premiere on May 11, 1981 at the New London Theatre and at subsequent performances, the audience was surprised to hear a string quartet playing during the interval. The reason: because Andrew Llloyd Webber was required by law to employ the four musicians anyway. At the time, the musicians' union insisted that violinists should also be employed for every musical performance, but the Cats orchestra only features wind instruments, drums and synthesizers.
