In honor of the revival - CATS! Original Production Photographs

Much appreciated!

Wow, the photos are striking.

Thanks for sharing these.

Great photos of the Original Broadway production...I remember reading the liner notes to Buckley's Concert at Carnegie Hall album about how many of the original cast members were lost to AIDS in the 1980's. So many young, talented lives gone entirely too soon

These are beautiful, as someone who has loved the show forever it's great to see some nice shots from the original production before seeing the revival. Thanks so much!!

Yes, the show opened in London with a far simpler hair / wig and make up design, which was changed later on to the now iconic design.

the tire still exists. fog and all. don't know where this flying happens, though.

I was hoping this time they really would put her on a tire and shoot her through the roof.

"Bye, Grizabella!!!"

I'm on the "I love Cats" side of the fence. Always had fun memories (no pun intended) because I went many times with different members of my family. It was my first Broadway recording - on cassette tape too! Probably my favorite memory was the time I was about 18 and I took my great grandmother. We didn't tell anyone where we were going. My grandmother called my mother and said "Do you know where my mother is?" and my mother responded "Do you know where my son is?" No one had cell phones then so it wasn't as easy to be tracked down! Oh I miss those days! hahaha

No one would take my great grandmother - then a bit frail and probably close to 90 at the time. I don't recall the exact age but I could do some legwork to dig up the ticket stub which I am pretty sure I still have.

When my great grandmother died...I finally revealed our secret to the family. I placed a Cats Playbill with her in the coffin. She loved the show and cherished that I went to all the trouble to get her into NYC and out without us getting in "trouble". hahhha

Somehow I got my hands on the original London cast album before it opened here and rather liked what I heard. I saw it soon after it opened, all those years ago. I remember not hating it but not loving it all that much -- it seemed to take itself rather more seriously than was really warranted, and I didn't always appreciate the changes made to the cats in Eliot's poems. The show's version of Macavity, for instance -- I mean really. And Ms. Buckley's Black & Decker drill-like screech rendition of "Memory" didn't help matters, especially in comparison with Elaine Page's. I don't know, there's just no there there, somehow, for all the smoke and tires and leg warmers.

Remember the commercials?



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g9EVBBgXeo

It's interesting to read the original New York Times review. I think he described the show's success perfectly.

"It's a musical that transports the audience into a complete fantasy world that could only exist in the theater and yet, these days, only rarely does. Whatever the other failings and excesses, even banalities, of ''Cats,'' it believes in purely theatrical magic, and on that faith it unquestionably delivers."

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/10/08/theater/theater-lloyd-webber-s-cats.html?pagewanted=all