Did you like cats before you wrote the stage musical in 1981?
We always had cats in our family. We lived in an apartment in South Kensington, near the Royal Albert Hall, and we had two called Sergei and Dmitri, in honor of the great Russian composers Prokofiev and Shostakovich. And my father, who was a composer and music teacher, used to walk around with a Siamese pussy called Perseus, or Percy, on his shoulder. My mother was mad about them, too.
Did she read you cat stories as a child?
She used to rather ignore us as children. She was a piano teacher and always very busy with her pupils. But she did once read us -- me and my brother, Julian -- T. S. Eliot's verses for children called OLD POSSUM'S BOOK OF PRACTICAL CATS, and they lodged in my mind. I loved the poems.
When you were interviewed for a scholarship at Oxford University you met another cat lover.
Yes, a marvelous old medieval historian in Magdalen College called K. B. McFarlane, whose room stank of cats. On my way in, I came across one of his Siamese cats and took an instant liking to it. I hung on to it throughout the interview, and I think that's why I was offered a place.
You left Oxford to work with Tim Rice. After your collaborations on "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," "Jesus Christ Superstar," and "Evita," how did "Cats" come about?
Tim and I had drifted apart. I wanted to compose music to an existing text, so I came back to these poems and wrote a song cycle. The dramatic structure came later, and that involved the director Trevor Nunn and the producer Cameron Mackintosh.
The first night in London was an electrifying occasion. There had never been a British dance musical. And yet it nearly never opened?
We couldn't raise the money. No one was interested. We'd got this theatrical graveyard, the New London, which was used for conferences, but we liked the revolving floor. We made up the capital with small investors, and I had to put a second mortgage on Sydmonton, my country house.
You thought the show was going to fail?
Not exactly. The previews went quite well, although Judi Dench had been injured and replaced at the last moment by Elaine Paige as Grizabella the glamour cat. And her song "Memory," of course, became the big hit. I remember the third preview very well. You could just sense something in the audience. Afterwards, I went to the nightclub, Annabel's, and the doorman said, "What are we going to do about a hotline for tickets?" The word had just got around and it was clear we were going to fly.
The show is the most successful musical ever, and a theatrical entertainment of great originality. How did you set about filming it?
We wanted to preserve the unique experience of "Cats" as an event while re-making it, if you like, as a film. The film is shot with sixteen cameras, four of them shooting all the numbers as master shots and every number done with reaction shots as if in a real movie. It's an extraordinary technique, and it's great for dance, too, because if we need a wide shot on dance we've got it, and if we need to come in close, we can pick the instant.
You love Puccini. Isn't "Memory" a song in that vein of romanticism?
I'd written the tune as a spoof Puccini item for something else, and as often happens, I hadn't actually used it anywhere. So when a song was needed for Grizabella, back it came again. When I first wrote the tune, I played it to my father and asked him if it sounded like Puccini. "No," he said, "it sounds like ten million dollars!"
The Performers' Biographies
ELAINE PAIGE (Grizabella) recently bewitched Broadway as Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Sunset Boulevard." She debuted in the UK tour of "The Roar of the Greasepaint -- The Smell of the Crowd" and appeared on the London stage in "Roar Like a Dove," "Rock Carmen: Maybe That's Your Problem," "Nuts," "Hair," and Lloyd Webber's "Jesus Christ Superstar." Later roles included Sandy in "Grease," the original Rita in "Billy," the original Eva Peron in Lloyd Webber's "Evita," the original Grizabella in "Cats," Carabosse in "Abbracadabra," the original Florence Vassey in "Chess," Reno Sweeney in "Anything Goes," Edith Piaf in "Piaf," and Celimene in "The Misanthrope." She received Laurence Olivier Award nominations as best actress in a musical for "Chess," "Anything Goes," and "Piaf."
JOHN MILLS (Gus) was born in North Elmham, England, in 1908. He made his film debut in THE MIDSHIPMAID in 1932, and during the next two decades was one of Britain's top box-office stars. Father of Hayley and Juliet Mills, he won an Academy Award for his performance as a crippled mute in David Lean's RYAN'S DAUGHTER. His best-known films include GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS, THE YOUNG MR. PITT, IN WHICH WE SERVE, THIS HAPPY BREED, GREAT EXPECTATIONS (as Mr. Pip), THE ROCKING HORSE WINNER, HOBSON'S CHOICE, AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, TUNES OF GLORY, SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON, THE CHALK GARDEN, THE WRONG BOX, GANDHI, DEADLY ADVICE, and Kenneth Branagh's HAMLET.
KEN PAGE (Old Deuteronomy) created the role of Old Deuteronomy in the original Broadway production of "Cats." He also appeared in the original Broadway casts of "Ain't Misbehavin'," "The Wiz," and "Guys and Dolls" (1976 revival). On the London stage, he has appeared in Stephen Schwartz's "Children of Eden," "My One and Only" (concert), and "Mr. Wonderful" (Sammy Davis, Jr. tribute). Film credits include TORCH SONG TRILOGY, I'LL DO ANYTHING, and voice characters for ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN and THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. Recent TV credits include Fox's acclaimed SOUTH CENTRAL. For the popular ENCORES! series at New York's City Center, he appeared in Irving Berlin's "Call Me Madam" and Cole Porter's "Out of This World." Earlier this year, he starred opposite Mickey Rooney and Eartha Kitt as the Cowardly Lion in the Madison Square Garden production of "The Wizard of Oz."
Did you like cats before you wrote the stage musical in 1981?
We always had cats in our family. We lived in an apartment in South Kensington, near the Royal Albert Hall, and we had two called Sergei and Dmitri, in honor of the great Russian composers Prokofiev and Shostakovich. And my father, who was a composer and music teacher, used to walk around with a Siamese pussy called Perseus, or Percy, on his shoulder. My mother was mad about them, too.
ELAINE PAIGE (Grizabella) recently bewitched Broadway as Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Sunset Boulevard." She debuted in the UK tour of "The Roar of the Greasepaint -- The Smell of the Crowd" and appeared on the London stage in "Roar Like a Dove," "Rock Carmen: Maybe That's Your Problem," "Nuts," "Hair," and Lloyd Webber's "Jesus Christ Superstar." Later roles included Sandy in "Grease," the original Rita in "Billy," the original Eva Peron in Lloyd Webber's "Evita," the original Grizabella in "Cats," Carabosse in "Abbracadabra," the original Florence Vassey in "Chess," Reno Sweeney in "Anything Goes," Edith Piaf in "Piaf," and Celimene in "The Misanthrope." She received Laurence Olivier Award nominations as best actress in a musical for "Chess," "Anything Goes," and "Piaf."
JOHN MILLS (Gus) was born in North Elmham, England, in 1908. He made his film debut in THE MIDSHIPMAID in 1932, and during the next two decades was one of Britain's top box-office stars. Father of Hayley and Juliet Mills, he won an Academy Award for his performance as a crippled mute in David Lean's RYAN'S DAUGHTER. His best-known films include GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS, THE YOUNG MR. PITT, IN WHICH WE SERVE, THIS HAPPY BREED, GREAT EXPECTATIONS (as Mr. Pip), THE ROCKING HORSE WINNER, HOBSON'S CHOICE, AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, TUNES OF GLORY, SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON, THE CHALK GARDEN, THE WRONG BOX, GANDHI, DEADLY ADVICE, and Kenneth Branagh's HAMLET.
KEN PAGE (Old Deuteronomy) created the role of Old Deuteronomy in the original Broadway production of "Cats." He also appeared in the original Broadway casts of "Ain't Misbehavin'," "The Wiz," and "Guys and Dolls" (1976 revival). On the London stage, he has appeared in Stephen Schwartz's "Children of Eden," "My One and Only" (concert), and "Mr. Wonderful" (Sammy Davis, Jr. tribute). Film credits include TORCH SONG TRILOGY, I'LL DO ANYTHING, and voice characters for ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN and THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. Recent TV credits include Fox's acclaimed SOUTH CENTRAL. For the popular ENCORES! series at New York's City Center, he appeared in Irving Berlin's "Call Me Madam" and Cole Porter's "Out of This World." Earlier this year, he starred opposite Mickey Rooney and Eartha Kitt as the Cowardly Lion in the Madison Square Garden production of "The Wizard of Oz."