At the end of April, my husband and I went to see the musical Cats at the London Palladium. Although I had spotted the ads in the tube for months, it was only when I saw the 'season ends soon' signs that I realised I was just about to miss it.
I bought tickets for the day before the last show just two or three days in advance. Like Broadway in New York, London’s West End is famous around the world for its numerous great musicals.There are many options available (including specialised websites and discounted same-day ticket booths, in Leicester square for example) to choose from the wide variety of shows, even when you book last minute.That is why now, after 2.5 years in London, I am almost ashamed to admit we had not yet been to a musical here.
I had seen Cats before when I was a student in Edinburgh, but could hardly remember any of it, except some of the costumes and the back of an old abandoned car as décor. But I remembered very well the breath-taking performance of the woman who then played Grizabella, a one-time glamour cat who sadly looks back on her glorious past and sings the well-known climax song Memory. This was originally sung by Elaine Paige when the musical was created in 1981; and has since been covered by numerous artists including Barbra Streisand, Shirley Bassey, Mireille Mathieu (for the French people among you) and even Susan Boyle in Britain’s Got Talent). As for my husband, he did not know anything about Cats except for the name.
Despite the London Palladium being one of the most famous theatres in London’s West End, I discovered it for the first time. I was pleasantly surprised as this theatre, located in Argyll Street (just off Oxford street and near Liberty’s) opened in 1910, is a beautiful Grade II listed building which has retained many of its original features. In some of the rooms upstairs, there were beautiful displays of old costumes from the past versions of the show and a wide collection of characters and drawings of cat costumes.
Cats is the fourth longest-running West End musical and is extremely popular (it has been translated into more than 20 languages). And yet, if you do not know anything about it, it can prove a bit confusing at first: it is quite long, the musical styles from one song to another are very eclectic, it resembles more of a ballet with added songs, there is no real story as it is mainly a presentation of the different cat characters, and you might even think it is just a mishmash of everything the composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, wanted to include.
But, despite all of this, the magic still operates and you are soon caught up by the music and dancing: the singers are great, the dancers are amazing, there many good songs that immediately get stuck in your head, the costumes and décor are beautiful and the mimicking of cats and their behaviours is pretty impressive. And to wrap it all up, the lyrics and texts are surprisingly well written and interesting as they were largely inspired by the Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and other literary works by the Literature Nobel Prize laureate T.S. Eliot.
I was a tiny bit disappointed by the interpretation of Memory but my expectations may have been a bit high and I was still humming and almost dancing at the end of the show.
The good news (for you) is that the show is already set to return from 23rd October. To book, you can use the official Cats website or one of the numerous websites dedicated to London musicals. Until then, there are loads of other musicals to see!
Written by Aude Eyraud. Aude is FOCUS Director of Marketing.
For more information about FOCUS visit: www.focus-info.
