Cats

Forty years after Andrew Lloyd Webber set T. S. Eliot’s nursery rhymes to music, Cats has returned. Beyond nostalgia and box office, the 2025 revival is curious: a faithful reconstruction of the 1980s original.

The cast, to their immense credit, works heroically. They leap, paw, and twitch whiskers with conviction. Gabriyel Thomas (Grizabella) sings “Memory” so gorgeously that for three minutes the evening almost justifies itself. Todd McKenney (Gus the Theatre Cat) supplies poignancy; no small feat in arthritic-tabby drag. Lucy Maunder lends Jellyorum warmth, and the ensemble pours heart, soul, and hamstrings into the enterprise. If effort alone made a masterpiece, this would be Chekhov with tails.

But alas, Cats is still Cats. A “plot” exists in theory: Jellicles gather to pick one for reincarnation. In practice, it’s a parade of vignettes where sleek young felines strut, none remotely in need of rebirth. Only poor Grizabella, the faded “Glamour” cat, carries tragedy. For her troubles, she gets the best song and the ticket skyward. The rest is choreography in heat. From a more cynical perspective, at times it looked like a clowder of Milennials and Gen Z’ers indulging in a bit of ye oldie ‘Boomer’ bashing. Couldn’t help wonder – what did Grizabella actually do that warrants this clowder of cats treating her as some kind of diseases. They won’t even touch her? Anyway – I digress. The things you think while watching a show.

Audiences cheer, as they always do; loud, shiny things plus babysitters equal applause. But in 2025 the show feels like a high-school reunion: everything is the same, only embalmed. In 1981 it was innovative - a non-book musical! Eliot’s verse set to disco spectacle! It caught the buoyant spirit of Thatcher’s Britain, pre-AIDS, pre–Cold War collapse. Now, polyester tails and embalmed choreography feel like waxwork, faintly scented with mothballs.

This staging is faithful: Gillian Lynne’s choreography, John Napier’s designs, the original orchestrations. Other Lloyd Webber works - Evita, Sunset Boulevard, Jesus Christ Superstar - have thrived under reinvention. Cats too has been brilliantly re-imagined; a drag-queen version (as drag-queens, not cats) suddenly made sense. This revival, however, plays it safe. What Cats needs is a director with claws, unafraid to shred the old fabric and stitch something new.

The performers deserve medals. The show itself? Less so. And yet - when I first saw Cats in the ’80s, it was a matinee packed with children. They adored it, and their joy was contagious. At Thursday’s opening, I again noticed children, some dressed as cats, utterly enraptured. Old Deuteronomy (Mark Vincent) stayed on stage during interval so families could climb up for photos. It was charming, and it tempered my reservations.

This revival may be more waxwork than wonder, but as theatre for children, it remains purr-fect.

Tony Knight