Cats Prowls Back to West End in 2013, Oz Tour???

Andrew Lloyd Webber‘s Love Never Dies, may have announced plans to close in the West End earlier this month, but if an interview Really Useful Group (RUG) chairman Mark Wordsworth has given to Variety is anything to go by, some of the Lord’s musicals have nine lives. Smash-hit musical Cats, which ran for 8,949 West End performances over 21 years from 1981 to 2002, could be coming back to London in 2013.

The slated revival, which would be produced by Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group and Cameron Mackintosh (producer of the original West End run), joins a series of planned Lloyd Webber productions, which Variety reports, include a star-led Broadway transfer for The Wizard of Oz as well as a UK tour. RUG also produce Michael Grandage‘s previously reported production of Evita which opens on Broadway in 2012, with Des McAnuff‘s Stratford, Ontario production of Jesus Christ Superstar being considered for a previously tipped arena tour and possible New York run.

The world’s longest running musical when it closed at the New London Theatre in 2002, Cats premiered in London with a cast that included Elaine Paige, Brian Blessed, Paul Nicholas and Wayne Sleep. Based on the 14 poems of TS Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, Cats was directed by Trevor Nunn, with associate direction and choreography by Gillian Lynne.