Tails of Two Cities
by Trevor Nunn

After the event we tend in the theatre to take an Olympian view of our successes and failures, and looking back through diaries and notebooks, we find there was meaning and purpose, as there is in tea-leaves. The making of Cats can be commemorated as many ways as there were collaborators to draw their subjective conclusions, but it seems to me that a brief record of mishap and might-have-been can only add piquancy to a volume that illustrates what finally was.

I have on occasion been tempted to believe that some of Shakespeare's plays had the unlikeliest origin; a chance remark, a broadsheet, and unrepeatable joke. I was not in the least surprised to discover that Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats was Eliot's book of strays - half-thought without a grand design; and I am not in the least abashed to admit that our musical based on T.S. Eliot's book was created haphazardly, through fervent trial and regular error.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's fascination with the poems came first. He discovered that Eliot was a lyricist as well as a poet; not only were the metres inventive, the rhyme schemes full of wit and the beat unfailingly maintained, but also the poems abounded in colloquialisms, catch phrases and choruses.

Andrew set many of the poems, gathered some friends, and at his festival at Sydmonton presented a first performance. In a sense the event was entirely in keeping with the manner in which Eliot came to write about his cats - for friends, for the children of friends, for and admiring circle, finding a huge audience only diffidently, stepping backwards into the limelight; all very English.

When I fist heard the 'Sydmonton Tapes' (a shorthand phrase used repeatedly during our preparation period that always fell upon my ear as le Carre-esque) I felt sure the right thing was to recommend to Andrew that he should be thinking of a chamber theatre event, with at most five talented performers and a quintet. Certainly I found it hard to reconcile this material with dreams of creating a popular show which could dismantle class and ethnic barriers, and which would be celebratory and uplifting, the familiar fantasies of all who set out to conquer The British Musical.

Clearly the main problem was - some would say still is - the absence of a narrative. Eliot didn't write one and to be at all true to his intentions, we too would have to make do without one. I doodled many a spectral plot-line as I re-read Alice in Wonderland, casting Eliot's Man In White Sprats - a figure he proposed should be our guide in the cat world, a sort of Debrett of the felines - as the White Rabbit, and envisioned a dream-like landscape full of improbability. Curiously, many ideas from that early stage of development have survived like ancient remains discovered intact above ground. Eventually it became clear to us that we had to find the suggestion of a narrative within or beneath the poems.

The discovery of the fragment 'Grizabella: the Glamour Cat' was probably the fulcrum moment in our planning. Here in eight lines Eliot was describing an intensely recognizable character with powerful human resonances, while introducing the themes of mortality, and the past, which occur repeatedly in the major poems. We decided that if Eliot had thought of being serious, touching, almost tragic in his presentation of a feline character, then we had to be doing a show which could contain that material, and the implications of it. Furthermore, we would have to achieve the sense of progression through themes more that incidents.

I had established with John Napier that we needed an environment rather than a set, and that we would have to find our space before we could take a start of the design. After a long search, the New London Theatre, well known as London's greatest theatrical white elephant, was measured for the task by John, beneath the baleful gaze of Producer, Composer, Director and Theatre Manager. The Choreographer danced in it a bit. Many heads were shaken and gloved hands thrust deeper into astrakhan overcoats. We would have to create a new auditorium configuration inside Sean Kenny's adaptable theatre. Not for us the tailoring of our show to a theatre; we had to be tailoring a theatre for our show.

We talked of the need to create in feline scale an alley, or a backyard. A few days later John spread a crinkled watercolor rendered on the cheap paper on the floor of my office at Aldwych. I hope he still has it. It's the equivalent of the first draft of a poem by a major writer - hundreds of changes to be made, but the thing itself, the reckless thing itself, was there.

Auditioning on an unprecedented scale (Glasgow, Manchester, Bristol, Biringham, London) proceeded in the time-honored American manner (low-level shots of rushing train wheels), structuring of the material made slow or rapid progress depending upon which restaurant it was being undertaken in, and the collaborators complained, as they always do, that somebody else knew more about what was happening than they did.

A cast was decided upon by a mixture of first impressions and last rounds, more cruel than Chorus Line could ever reveal: there is no pleasure in having the power to decide. At that level of work it's not possible to say 'she is less good than she', but only, subjectively and irrationally, 'she gets the part... she doesn't'.

The cast were suddenly in danger of not having a show, thought they didn't know it. The owners of the New London decided that conferences only could take place there, and Cats wasn't a conference. The protests were many and after a suspenseful week the decision was reversed and Cats had another life.

Rehearsals started in Chiswick, which was only all right for Gillian Lynne who lived round the corner. However, since she was working harder than anybody else the arrangement was indisputable. I cannot resist turning aside here to pay tribute to this indomitable and inimitable choreographer/director/colleague/friend. And while aside, I am tempted to remark that directing hasn't necessarily got anything to do with telling people where they stand (neither necessarily has choreography). I mention this because critics in print have said, since the show is dance from beginning to end, that they were unclear about the role of the director. It was certainly the most unusual role I have ever undertaken, but among other things it involved writing and structuring material, conducting improvisations, delineating character, finding and communicating textual meaning and marrying the text with physical expression, pacing and phrasing the various sections of the show, arbitrating and adjudicating, connecting the many collaborators together by attempting to describe the intention of the whole, and carrying the can.

Soon there were no longer some dancers, some singers and some actors, but a group of performers probing a mystery, equally unfamiliar with the demands being made and equally prepared (that most vital of all rehearsal conditions) to be foolish in each other's eyes. From thence mysteriously flows mutual respect.

Every group has a natural leader. We lost ours unexpectedly and tragically in the third week of our work. Judi Dench was walking across and almost empty rehearsal room when she collapsed, crying out as if felled by a blow. As friends rushed to her assistance she spoke words that chilled the hearers. 'Who kicked me?' The possibility of a snapped Achilles tendon passed through many minds at that moment and by late evening Judi, who could only move if carried, knew the worst.

She could be back with us encased in plaster just before our preview performances were scheduled to begin. In the meantime she would be in hospital, recuperating from and emergency operation.

When nearly three weeks later Judi joined me in a deserted theatre in the Haymarket where we had been rehearsing, she could hardly move and she was as vulnerable as only the truly ill can be. The theatre creaked, ghosts walked and she sang her songs into the darkness of the empty auditorium for the only time. Two days later, when she came determined to rejoin the show as scheduled, she lost her balance in a flurry of crutches and pitched off an entrance ramp into rows of ungiving seats and hurt herself worse than before. Her bravery was not lost on a company who could build on her example even if they now hand to face the loss of her genius.

The theatre thrives on myths, exaggerations, miracles. Elaine Paige, more out of a sense of Andrew Lloyd Webber's need than anything, generously agreed to take over Grizabella. Pursued by journalists and cameramen, we rehearsed for two days in littered rooms with rickety furniture and naked light bulbs. Grizabella rooms. Ah, the glamour of the theatre. Crisis is a great leveler. An already unified and committed group were galvanized to require yet more of themselves. Our first preview took off. The adrenaline raced in the company and audience alike. Elaine got through. The cheers rang out. Detailed work could now begin.

It shouldn't end for a long time to come. Improving is the only way to stand still in the theatre; everything else is going backwards. We will do the show in different spaces, in different towns in different lands. We will know precisely where to begin next time, precisely what to say and how to say it, precisely what to avoid and what to master. But nothing will compare with the memory of the ecstatic strain and the grim joy of the first time we made Cats.

****

Tape Running. What would you say are the differences between theatre in New York and theatre in London?

I was asked that a hundred times during the Cats rehearsal in New York but somehow what I said never got into print. So here at last is the answer an anxious world has been waiting for.

Surprisingly little I would say if we are discussing working conditions of the expectation of talent from and original cast - there is nothing that cannot be achieved in any field of theatrical expression, with equal success on either side of the Atlantic, contemporary or classical, legitimate or popular, musical or straight.

In my view there is no truth in the generalization that the English artist cannot do musicals and that his American brothers and sisters cannot handle language. It is true that a much smaller part of English theatre training is devoted to musical work, and this should be remedied instantly and urgently; and it is true that American performers are not frequently asked by American dramatists to have a heightened sense of language, which is shameful wastage of resources, since most American actors I have worked with can quarter a thought and double and entendre with the best of the back in the Old Country.

But there are differences. In New York the commercial theatre, dominated by the theatre-owning organizations and the producers, is the sole form of theatre that reaches a large public, and therefore taste, judgement, potential risk and permissible innovation are answerable to, even one might say formed by, the box office. In London the scene is dominated by government-subsidized theatre companies. Therefore the London theatre is fundamentally more experimental and less traditional than the Broadway stage, and in something of a chicken-and-egg situation, the London theatre enjoys a wide coverage in a host of newspapers genuinely interested in the theatre as an art, and prepared to give interesting developments the benefit of the doubt. In New York there is only one serious taste-forming newspaper (highly conscious of the jealous of its power) which is interested in the art form but is more interested in delivering the judgement of success or failure, up or down, like a Roman Emperor's thumb.

A theatre business that has only smash or flop categories is problematic for investors, because if the critical judgements of journalists go against, there is no management skill or expression of faith that can alter the doom of the stricken show. So not surprisingly, nobody wants to back a high-risk enterprise; if it had been necessary to originate in America, it might not have got off the ground.

One Cats had opened in London, the wisdom and daring of many New York managements became apparent in offers received from various producers, who were agreed that the streets of New York were paved with gold; but nobody talked wisdom and daring so generously as Bernie Jacobs and Gerry Schoenfeld of the Shubert Organization. This yin and Yang combination, two inscrutable but opposite faces representing the unknowable, must be formidable enemies, but it was our pleasure to encounter them as quietly supportive , affable enthusiasts who had yet to discover that the word No had entered the dictionary and was available for official usage. They stuck to Yes, and if in the end time decrees that they were right not to interfere or complain, then posterity has a right to know that whatever hysteria is cost them, they kept it out of the theatre.

From the first we were given everything. Two thousand artists to audition, for instance. Meeting two thousand people with a view to getting to know them is both hard and exhilarating work. So often this person who sings flat of can't manage the dance combination turns out to be the one who has founded a children's theatre, or fought cancer of the throat, or know J. M. Barrie, or tell you the story you wake up laughing about for weeks to come; so often that perfectly beautiful girl turns out to be hard-centered of can't laugh, or doesn't listen. What an infuriating species we are, that imperfection should be so very attractive and perfect accomplishment alienating. Americans are very good at meeting people. At auditions in England you often have to dig out what is inside like an escargot on a pin; in America it's more like soft-shelled crabs - everything is there on the plate to be eaten whole.

I had been secretly concerned that Eliot's words might sound less innocent when expressed in American accents, but this was an unnecessary fear. I realized by the end of the first day of auditions that I wanted to do an American show, not an English imitation, and therefore all the green-card-carrying expatriate Londoners in New York were going to stand much less chance of being involved. There are certain New York actors who have developed the specialist skill of speaking Oxford English, which they demonstrate by auditioning with speeches from Shakespeare's plays, spoken in a grand manner. I started to understand just how Americans must feel when they see us English playing Kaufman & Hart or O'Neill. It's not that the accents are inaccurate, it's jus that the experience isn't real; imitation goods.

Personality is quite clearly as important as ingredient in Cats as skill. Personality and eccentricity. The chosen actors have to be able to beam the personalities through oddly shaped wigs and highly colored make-ups and unusual physical behavior, and so their characters in performance are almost bound to be derived from constituents of their real natures. So to find out more about the real natures of the performers, it was necessary to improvise.

The improvisations lasted for many days over the first two weeks of rehearsal. Everybody played ball. Everybody honest and serious and analytical. I kept waiting for the classic English reaction that such work is a waste of time - and it never came. Perhaps I wish I had been opposed because fighting for your life is more exhilarating that expounding the Talmud - but I wasn't opposed, and the work was happy and fascinating, and on several occasions we became enraptured.

Occasionally I became conscious of the irony that a group of incredibly fit, exquisitely muscled and coordinated performers were subjecting themselves to the instructions of a sedentary middle-aged specimen fast running to seed (before any of my collaborators get worried I am referring to myself). But then I would be encouraged by the experience of attending the sessions of our musical supremo, Stanley Labowski. Looking like a Rubens cherub in retirement, Stanley gives you that feeling that each rehearsal is going to be imbued with the spirit of Christmas, until somebody transgresses, when biological metamorphosis occurs. Suddenly ogreish and demonic, he terrifies the necessary results out of the palpitating throats of his subjects, caught in the glare of his rampant perfectionism. However, there is one thing Stanley Labowski cannot do: sing. His voice could smash Tiffany chandeliers at thirty paces. While demonstrating harmonies for the assembled company his face expresses the kind of relaxed delight you would associate with someone having a bullet removed from the thigh without anaesthetic of even a tot of brandy. It is a mystery appropriate to the artistic process that Stanley produces in others singing that is sonorously beautiful when his own voice makes frogs wince. It was a constant delight to observe and collaborate with somebody who is the best.

Our greatest unease proceeded from the greatest unknown; what would happen to the concept of our environmental piece in an auditorium, albeit adapted, based on a proscenium configuration? The first moment of being on a set can make the ingredients of a show fall apart. Sometimes, perceptibly and instantly, the first encounter with the stage can make everything fall together. Company and crew alike seem to know that what they have been working at for weeks separately now makes complete sense, and this knowledge, which I have often but not always encountered, produces an energy which in itself diminishes problems and creates an appetite for solutions. Well, energy flowed. Everybody plugged in.

Cats sets out to transport its audience to a world in which plot and conventional character development are rendered unnecessary by the experience of a fantasy without human circumscriptions. All fine and dandy until the hydraulic ramp gets stuck or a color changer develops a death rattle, or the speakers go into feedback of a million and one other devices don't deliver. The potential for technical shambles is every minute of Cats is awesome, and the triumph f every department over their difficulties leads me to yearn for a roll call of everyone.

After the first run-through onstage we all cried together. Theatre is a totally emotional, some would say childishly emotional, business, but these moments of release and of feeling for each other are not to be dismissed, still less despised. Tears of relief and need constitute incontrovertible evidence of what people have risked in a rehearsal of performance, and the only theatre the public wants to know about (though they probably don't and shouldn't realize it) is the theatre that takes everything you are and everything you have to get it there, and keep it there. In America. In England. Everywhere.

So, a small group of people late at night in a darkened theatre, unable to say much, were nearly ready to expose themselves to those peculiar conditions of judgement that exist in New York and New York alone. Thumbs up. Thumbs down. Life or death. If any member of that critical fraternity were ever to feel or understand the well-spring of those tears I have tried to describe, he would see how destructive and undignified it is that caprice should govern the lives and livelihoods of artists. I am not squeezing sour grapes. Cats was given its life - many have predicted its nine lives - so my regret does not proceed from personal hurt. It is, in a technological age, my regret that New York would be destroying the conditions for the achievement of what it does best. And all because of a gesture from and Emperor who has no clothes.

~CATS: The Making of the Musical~