• October 25, 1982
• Vol. 18
• No. 17

What's New Pussycat?

A British Musical Has Broadway Purring

The hottest whiskers on Broadway this season belong to a musical whose unforgettable cast features names like Griddlebones, Skimbleshanks and Rum Tum Tugger. And if ordinary cats have only nine lives, Broadway's newest smash, Cats, may well live forever. The $4.5 million London import was adapted by prolific composer Andrew Lloyd-Webber from T.S. Eliot's lightverse classic, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. The actors, all costumed as Eliot's anthropomorphic felines, emerge slinking, prancing, hissing and tunefully caterwauling from a set that resembles nothing less than a Brobdingnagian junkyard. Here, as described in Eliot's verse, are just a few of the exotic, quixotic, even erotic creatures on the prowl every night in Cats,

DONNA KING AS BOMBALURINA

Are you blind when you're born?
Can you see in the dark?
Can you say of your bite that it's worse than your bark?

TIMOTHY SCOT AS MR. MISTOFFOLEES

And not long ago this phenomenal cat produced seven kittens right out of a hat!

BETTY BUCKLEY AS GRIZABELLA

And the postman sighed, as he scratched his head: "You'd really ha' thought she'd ought to be dead. And who would ever suppose that that Was Grizabella, the Glamour Cat!"

RENÉ CEBALLOS, RENÉ CLEMENTE AND JANET HUBERT AS JELLICLE CATS

Jellicle Cats come out tonight Jellicle Cats come one come all: The Jellicle Moon is shining bright—Jellicles come to the Jellicle Ball.