Gossip

New life for Cats at Open Air Theatre next summer?

| London's West End |

6 July 2012

UPDATE: A representative of the Open Air Theatre contacted Whatsonstage.com and said: “There’s no truth whatsoever to the Cats story. We can only think that Jon Bausor’s apocalyptic set for Ragtime has seeded a whisper that has turned into something else entirely.”

Cats is tipped for a run at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in summer 2013, according to the Daily Mail.

Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s musical has been absent from the London stage since closing in 2002, at which point is was the longest-running musical on the West End.

An interview last year in Variety saw the chairman of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group also hint that 2013 would be the year the cats came home, but the theatre’s official line is still that nothing is confirmed.

The previous rumour also name-dropped producer Cameron Mackintosh, who was behind the original West End run, but no names mentioned this time round. Not a whisker.

Cats premiered in 1981 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.