Practical cats

Q. What's this about cats having three names

A. 'The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter, / It isn't just one of your holiday games; / You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter / When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.'

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It's a quotation from 'The Naming of Cats', one of the poems in T.S. Eliot's collection Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, which was, as we all know, the basis for Andrew Lloyd Webber's blockbuster of blockbusters, Cats.

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Q. What's the relevance

A. Thomas Stearns Eliot - Andrew Lloyd Webber: three names apiece. Tenuous or some spooky connection

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Q. Pointlessly tenuous. But, isn't it surprising that one of the great poetry heavyweights of the 20th century should have written the poems which were adapted for one of the biggest - and fluffiest - musicals of all time

A. Critics and Eliot scholars have been turning their collective nose up at Old Possum since it first appeared in 1936. By all accounts Eliot himself was less then enthusiastic about the effect its publication might have on his reputation as a serious poet.

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However, generations of children - and not a few adults - have loved these poems, and they do catch some of the foibles of cats (if that's your thing) in a way unsurpassed by any other poems. In fact, they lend themselves perfectly to the kind of show that Cats is.

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What would be more surprising is if Lloyd Webber had tried to put some of Eliot's weightier work to music.

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Q. Who was Old Possum

A. Old Possum was Eliot's nickname at university.

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Q. How about a little on TS

A. T.S. Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on 26 September 1888. After Harvard University, he continued his philosophy doctorate at Merton College, Oxford. He also spent a year at the Sorbonne. His most famous works - other than Old Possum, of course - are the early collection The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) and 'The Waste Land' (1922), though, apart from his poetry, he also published critical works.

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Other than as a poet he worked as a teacher, a clerk at Lloyds bank and as a director at his own publishing house Faber and Faber, where he was responsible for adding W.H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore and Ted Hughes to the poetry roster.

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Described once by F. Scott Fitzgerald as 'the greatest living poet in any language', Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948 'for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry'. That same year he was awarded the Order of Merit (he had become a British subject in 1927). In recent years the issue of his anti-Semitism has caused some re-evalution, as has the surprising discovery of some dirty verses.

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Q. And is Cats is finally to close in London

A. Yes. By the time it closes on its 21st birthday - 11 May 2001 - more than eight million people will have watched the 9,000 plus performances of Cats in the West End. This makes it the longest-running musical ever on the London stage - and it also has the same distinction on Broadway, where it closed in September 2000 after 7,485 performances over almost 18 years.

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However, despite having been seen by more than 50 million people in 300 cities around the world, grossing �136m at London box offices and a further �1.25 billion worldwide, it is only the second-highest grossing musical cash cow of all time.

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Q. And the winner is

A. Can't you guess Phantom of he Opera, by...well, you don't have to be told, do you.

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Q. Any interesting snippets about Cats

A. The original London cast included Brian Blessed (shouting, no doubt), Paul Nicholas, Wayne Sleep, Sarah Brightman (of course), Bonnie Langford and - wait for it - 'Dame' Judy Dench. However, the then plain Ms Dench suffered a torn achilles tendon before the first night and Elaine Paige took over the part of Grizabella: 'Memory, all alone in the moonlight / I can smile at the old days I was beautiful then / I remember the time I knew what happiness was / Let the memory live again'. Ah.

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Q. So, bang goes the royalty income

A. Faber and Faber, Eliot's publishing house, have made huge sums out of the royalties from Cats. Fabers are a relatively small, literary publisher, so, lacking the mega-sellers of the bigger houses, the income has helped subsidise their less mainstream enterprises and their poetry list. However, Cats will always be on somewhere, so some money will keep coming in.

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Q. What's ALW up to next

A. His latest project, to be premi�red some time in 2002, will be Bombay Dreams, a Bollywood-style extravaganza. Scripted by Meera Syal and with music by the Indian composer A.R. Rehman, Lloyd Webber's role will be as producer rather than composer. (No bad thing, some might say.)

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By Simon Smith