Broadway fans know the musical Cats by Andrew Lloyd Webber for its famous song “Memory” and for its rather nonexistent plot. With Webber’s repertoire of more successful musicals such as Evita and The Phantom of the Opera, one might have expected more from him. However, unbeknownst to many, the original author never intended Cats to become a musical. It was certainly never intended to become a film, its fifth and hopefully last translation across genres. Before it became a musical in 1981, Cats was a song cycle composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on T. S. Eliot’s 1939 poetry collection Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. T. S. Eliot’s book has been adapted from a book of light poetry into a musical score, a song cycle, a Broadway musical, and a movie. Of all of them, the poems are truly best enjoyed in their original format, without having to hold up an inconsistent chain of events. However, for the feat of weaving these unconnected poems into a coherent storyline, Andrew Lloyd Webber deserves admiration.
T. S. Eliot originally wrote the whimsical cat poems for his godchildren and published them at the beginning of World War II. Despite criticism of the inappropriate timing, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats soon outsold his other book of poetry, The Waste Land. Besides advice about how to name and address a cat, the poems offer imaginative ideas of a world of working, fighting, and dancing cats, set in beautiful rhyme. Outside of their set rhyme, rhythm, and word choice, the poems are simply not as enjoyable. Furthermore, each poem stands alone, and each cat’s poem rarely refers to cats in other poems. For these reasons, placing them in a musical was perhaps too far-fetched an idea. Although Webber accomplished much by bringing these stories to the modern public in a complete narrative, the musical has obvious flaws. Nevertheless, much of the criticism around Cats can be explained by its unusual origin, including its bumpy plot and fantastic ideas. Webber did succeed in placing the tone and themes of “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” an Eliot poem not from Practical Cats, into the familiar song “Memory,” although it does not reach the depth of the original poem. Here are parts of “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” and the lyrics to “Memory” for the purpose of comparison.
“Rhapsody on a Windy Night” by T. S. Eliot
Twelve o’clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations,
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium. …
The lamp hummed:
“Regard the moon,
La lune ne garde aucune rancune,
She winks a feeble eye,
She smiles into corners.
She smoothes the hair of the grass.
The moon has lost her memory.
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
Her hand twists a paper rose,
That smells of dust and old Cologne,
She is alone
With all the old nocturnal smells
That cross and cross across her brain.”…
“Memory” by Andrew Lloyd Webber
Midnight, not a sound from the pavement
Has the moon lost her memory?
She is smiling alone
In the lamplight, the withered leaves collect at my feet
And the wind begins to moan
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
Every streetlamp seems to beat
A fatalistic warning
Someone mutters and the streetlamp gutters
And soon
It will be morning
Daylight
I must wait for the sunrise
I must think of a new life
And I mustn’t give in
When the dawn comes, tonight will be a memory too
And a new day will begin
Burnt-out ends of smokey days
The stale cold smell of morning
The street lamp dies, another night is over
Another day is dawning
Sunlight through the trees in summer
Endless masquerading
Like a flower, as the day is breaking
The memory is fading
Touch me
It’s so easy to leave me
All alone with my memory
Of my days in the sun
If you touch me, you’ll understand what happiness is
Look, a new day has begun
All things considered, Webber has sufficiently rendered T. S. Eliot’s beloved cat poems into Broadway songs, but much is lost in translation. For poetry lovers, the true meaning and nonsense of the poems is best enjoyed in the original book with its unprecedented cat names and touching stories. As for the Broadway lovers who randomly clicked through this article, they now know more about the story behind Cats, the mixed-up, misfit musical.
Sources:
Photo credit: Viaggio Routard, Flickr
“Andrew Lloyd Webber.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 12 Sept. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Lloyd_Webber.
“Cats (Musical).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 18 Aug. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cats_(musical)#Background.
Eliot, T. S. “Rhapsody on a Windy Night.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44215/rhapsody-on-a-windy-night.
Hughes, Kathryn. “The Nine Lives of Cats: How Poetry Became a Musical, Then a Film …” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 16 Dec. 2019, www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/16/nine-lives-ts-eliot-book-practical-cats-andrew-lloyd-webber-taylor-swift.
“Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 27 Jan. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Possum%27s_Book_of_Practical_Cats.
Webber, Andrew Lloyd. “Memory: Andrew Lloyd Webber Ft. Elaine Paige.” Genius, Genius Media Group Inc., genius.com/Andrew-lloyd-webber-memory-lyrics.