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Cats is a sung-through musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on the 1939 poetry collection Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot.
It tells the story of a tribe of cats called the Jellicles and the night they make the Jellicle choice by deciding which cat will ascend to the Heaviside layer and come back to a new life.
As of 2022, Cats remains the fourth-longest-running Broadway show and the sixth-longest-running West End show.
Lloyd Webber began setting Eliot's poems to music in 1977, and the compositions were first presented as a song cycle in 1980. Producer Cameron Mackintosh then recruited director Trevor Nunn and choreographer Gillian Lynne to turn the songs into a complete musical.
Cats opened to positive reviews at the New London Theatre in the West End in 1981 and then to mixed reviews at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway in 1982.
It won numerous awards including Best Musical at both the Laurence Olivier and Tony Awards.
Despite its unusual premise that deterred investors initially, the musical turned out to be an unprecedented commercial success, with a worldwide gross of US$3.5 billion by 2012.
The London production ran for 21 years and 8,949 performances, while the Broadway production ran for 18 years and 7,485 performances, making Cats the longest-running musical in both theatre districts for a number of years.
Cats has since been revived in the West End twice and on Broadway once. It has also been translated into multiple languages and performed around the world many times.
Cats started the megamusical phenomenon, establishing a global market for musical theatre and directing the industry's focus to big-budget blockbusters, as well as family- and tourist-friendly shows. The musical's profound but polarising influence also reshaped the aesthetic, technology, and marketing of the medium.
Cats was adapted into a direct-to-video film in 1998, and a feature film directed by Tom Hooper in 2019.
More information: Cats, The Musical
Memory is a show tune composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, with lyrics by Trevor Nunn based on poems by T. S. Eliot.
It was written for the 1981 musical Cats, where it is sung primarily by the character Grizabella as a melancholic remembrance of her glamorous past and as a plea for acceptance.
Memory is the climax of the musical and by far its best-known song, having achieved mainstream success outside of the musical. According to musicologist Jessica Sternfeld, writing in 2006, it is by some estimations the most successful song ever from a musical.
Memory was named the Best Song Musically and Lyrically at the 1982 Ivor Novello Awards.
More information: TPAC
I can dream of the old days
Life was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again.
Andrew Lloyd Webber
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