In the Bag

You know: Andrew Lloyd Webber, pomp and circumstance, fucking “Memory," seven Tony wins (including Best Musical and Best Original Score), Grizabella the Glamour Cat, cats crawling all over the auditorium—Cats! First shown in London’s West End in 1981, Cats is still considered one of the biggest successes in the history of modern musical theater and has since been translated into more than 20 languages for productions around the globe. The story is a slightly bizarre one of a secret cat society, complete with a villain, Macavity, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern types, Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer. Webber based the musical on T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, in which Eliot proclaims his affection for assigning cat names and attributes to people—cats, he says, are very much like us. But with hairier stomachs.
Dec. 16-20, 7:30 p.m.; Sun., Dec. 21, 6:30 p.m., 2008