Cats (London Palladium) – Kerry Ellis is 'stonking'

Memory of those heady 1981 days when the New London Theatre revolve took half the audience for a spin meant that expectations for this revival were relatively low. Nothing, surely, could recreate that first feline encounter, up close and personal, and certainly not the canyons of the London Palladium.

Wrong – and lesson one was to accept that it's not about replication. What we lose in intimacy we gain in spectacle as John Napier's famous rubbish-tip set spiders out into the stalls and dress circle; and, with the original creative team on hand to buff Chrissie Cartwright's polished tour version into a West End gem, Cats is still a kitten – wide-eyed and busting with energy.

Lesson two was to appreciate that the UK's pool of song-and-dance professionals is fuller now than it's ever been, and this new incarnation of Cats is a sea of lycra-clad eye-candy where everyone's a star. From Ross Finnie's mercurial Skimbleshanks to Hannah Kenna Thomas's lithe, supple White Cat, the standard of this company is breathtaking. Callum Train as Munkustrap, like Jeff Shankley before him, glues the show together with vocal sturdiness, but in his case it's also allied to an extraordinary physical grace.

We're back for the new Grizabella. Kerry Ellis has replaced Nicole Scherzinger as the only name on the posters, and she justifies her billing with a stonking account of "Memory" that shows why she's today's go-to musical diva. Unsuspecting punters might wonder why Ellis spends so much of the show in her dressing room while the other moggies are busy triple-threating their tushes off, but when they hear those four minutes of magic they'll get it.

There's one extremely satisfying scenic innovation in this revival, as Napier and new lighting designer Howard Eaton reconceive Grizabella's elevation to the heaviside layer as a near-mystical experience, but overall the show looks pretty much as it did 30-something years ago. Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical tweakings, though, are a mixed bag: the new Growltiger sequence works a treat, but it would need an urban rapper to make the Rum Tum Tugger convince as an urban rapper, notwithstanding Antoine Murray-Straughan's winning performance.

These modern productions are all very well, as Gus the Theatre Cat reminds us, but there's nothing to equal a big '80s show when it's on fire – and Cats is definitely that. Is it really only here until April? 'Now and forever' ran the strapline during the last millennium. Sounds like a plan.

Read Michael Coveney's review from December 2014