Cats is based on a book of poems by T.S. Eliot called Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats from 1939. The music from the musical is done by Andrew Lloyd Webber, but most of the songs are actually the poems Eliot wrote, just put to music. Then rather than having the musical follow a traditional narrative like other stories, it's set up kind of like a revue (which I'll talk about a famous one tomorrow) where each number is different contenders being introduced by characters. The contenders are for which cat will ascend to Heaven from their tribe, which is the main focus of the musical. I used to think Cats was kid friendly, and maybe on the surface it still is, but thinking too hard about this it's literally a play about death. Originally there was no desire to make it a play, it was just a pet project for Webber in 1977 to see if he could write music for predetermined lyrics and chose this book of poems because it was a favorite of his as a kid. He got the idea to put it together thematically after doing a song cycle (songs that tell a story together) and approached Cameron Mackintosh about it. In 1980 it started as a song cycle called Practical Cats at Sydmonton Festival. That festival was attended by T.S. Eliot's widow, who brought along some unpublished poems that were deemed too sad for children and weren't put in the book. One of those is what spawned the idea for a full musical. They brought on Trevor Nunn who was the artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company to direct, in hopes the his high-brow reputation would add pedigree to the project and earn the approval of Eliot's widow. He's the one who said they needed a cohesive story flowing through the poems and was in charge of figuring it out. To get that they needed to add in a lot, including some songs not from the poems and they struggled to actually finish the plan well into previews. Which... it's kind of hard to do previews for a show that isn't even finished. Between that, and their lead actress getting hurt, Webber putting himself in possible financial ruin if the play failed, and having to postpone the opening, it's a miracle that Cats even opened. It did though. It opened in the West End in 1981 and had 8,949 performances, holding the record for the longest running musical until 2006. Since then it's come back many times and there is currently a musical film for it in the works to come out at the end of the year. So if you haven't seen it and want to, prepare for that and maybe read the poems.
Peace.
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