Curtain Falls on 'Cats' After 18 Years of Shows
N E W Y O R K, Sept. 10, 2000 -- “Cats”, Broadway’s longest running show, hung up its whiskers, tails and toe shoes today after nearly 18 years and a record 7,485performances.
It was an emotional weekend at the Winter Garden Theater,starting with the Saturday matinee where the audience includedalumni from the musical’s Broadway and touring productions.
The Saturday evening performance was a special benefit for the Actors’Fund, the theater service organization that takes care ofentertainment professionals. It was also the last public performance. Today’s final performance wasby invitation only.
“Cats” which has music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, is based on“Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats”, a collection of poems by T.S. Eliot. Although he died in 1965, Eliot still received a Tony Award18 years later for his contributions to the score. His widow becamea very wealthy woman, receiving royalties from a show that hasgrossed more than $380 million on Broadway alone.
The Show People Loved to Hate
The musical began the dominance of the big British musical onBroadway, an influence that has started to slip — “Miss Saigon” also will close New Year’s Eve — but may never fade away.
“Remember, two others — “Les Miserables” and “The Phantom of the Opera” — are still with us,” theater historian Ken Mandelbaum said. “And one, if not two, may eventually pass “Cats” in longevity. “Phantom” only has six years to go.”
“Cats” was considered quite unusual when it first opened onBroadway, Mandelbaum said. “It wasn’t a book musical. It was all music and very dependent on dance.”
Over the years, the musical became the show people loved tohate, with everyone from Letterman to Leno making fun of its popscore, lavish setting and those furry creatures crawling all overthe stage and the audience.
Going Out With a Roar
“If “Cats” had only run four or five years, there wouldn’t have been the resentment again it,” Mandelbaum says. “People didn’t want it to be the longest running show,” especially after it took the long-run crown away from a homegrown product, “A Chorus Line” in June 1997.
Still, audiences came, singing “Memory,” the show’s mostpersistent melody, sung in the show by Grizabella, the musical’sfaded glamour cat, who climbs in the show’s final moments to “the heavy-side layer,” a feline version of heaven.
“Cats ”went out with a roar rather than a meow.
The show originally was to have closed June 25, but a surge inticket sales led to an extension. For much of the summer, it wasone of Broadway’s highest-grossing shows, often operating at morethan 90 percent capacity and pulling in grosses of more than$550,000 a week as tourists and die-hard fans flocked back.
For the first time since 1982, the Winter Garden, one ofBroadway’s most visible theaters, will be dark. One of the fewtheaters actually located on Broadway, Winter Garden has a giantmarquee that until now has sported the show’s ubiquitous logo — apair of yellow cats’ eyes.
A new tenant already has been booked and theater people think itcould be the next blockbuster. After an extensive renovation andrestoration, the Winter Garden will reopen with another Londonsuccess: “Mamma Mia!” — a musical built around ABBA’s greatest hits. Yet don’t plan on seeing it anytime soon. Opening night for “Mamma Mia!” is Oct. 18, 2001.