Cats -- from the children's book to the stage. Episode 17 (Cats 3 of 8)

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Cats, 3rd episode

A show is about to open in two days.  It features a power-packed pair of producers who would re-write Broadway history with two of the biggest musicals of all time, POA and Les Mis.  The female lead is in one of the final rehearsals, and it will be her place in history to sing into the world a song so powerful, so vital, so memorable, that it will immediately become a top-10 hit, get re-recorded more than 600 times, including two MORE trips to the top 10 by two others who are mega-stars in their own right.

I can’t fool you.  You are listening to a musical theater podcast.  You know the performer, and you know the song.  Elaine Paige is performing to an empty house, but she’s doing one of the final run-throughs of Memory, performing in Grisabella before the opening of Cats, and the mega-stars are Barbera Streisand and Barry Mantilow.

The other performers watch from the wings – it’s almost the only moment of the show where they aren’t all dancing during the musical numbers.  The orchestra rises in anticipation; this is the song that will make the show.  In fact, it’s the song that almost all the critics will point to as holding the entire show together, and show that will go on to play tends of thousands of times, win every major award, break all records for longest run and largest return.

It's a formula that’s worked before; Andrew Lloyd Webber, the composer, has paired with lyricist Tim Rice, and the magic that is conjured with the fusion of those two genius minds never fails to move audiences.

And then, breathlessly at first, she trills words that will soon be immoral: “Daylight / I won’t care if it finds me / With no breath in my body / With no beat in my heart.”

Wait.  What?  No, those aren’t the words.  I really can’t fool you!

But they were almost the words…that’s right, the lyrics to maybe the most immortal song in Broadway history were changed 2 days before the show opened.  And that was after the female lead had to pull from the show because she snapped her Achilles tendon, before the producers declared what the director had been done was not fit for the stage and threatened to pull the whole thing, before all the costumes were scrapped and re-done one week out.

And these are just some of things that almost derailed the show before it ever started.  But, as we know, these obstacles were overcome.  What had to happen for the show to get off the ground, and, most importantly, why did it work?  In the words of director Trevor Nunn, “the theater creaked, the ghosts walked…” and we’ll find out where they went in this episode of THM.

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