CATNIP FOR ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER FANS:

In a production supervised by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, "Cats" 
makes its world televsion premiere on PBS.

by Peter Filichia

Now "Cats" really is "now and forever."

While the stage productions that have been playing in London since 
1981 and on Broadway since 1982 have made that claim, those 
productions will close someday.

"Cats", though, will now definitely live for time immemorial, thanks 
to a video version that's already in stores.

And one that will be broadcast on Monday at 8 p.m. on Channel 13.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical about the secret lives of felines has 
already been seen by 50 million people in 27 countries.  But that 
will be a drop in the milk bowl compared to those who'll see this 
version, filmed on the stage of London's Adelphi Theatre.

Not bad for a show that was given no chance when Lloyd Webber and 
producer Cameron Mackintosh first announced the project.  A musical 
based on 14 T.S. Eliot poems?  With human beings dressed in hairy 
costumes?  With no real plot and just a lot of dancing?  In a theater 
that had barely been booked for seven years?

No, "Cats" had to be a dog.

Things looked worse when Judi Dench, playing the hard-luck, 
bedraggled Grizabella, was hurt in rehearsals - experiencing the 
first of many back-wrenching, ankle-spraining, charley-horse inducing 
injuries that would befall thousands of "cats".  

To avoid a catastrophe, Lloyd Webber immediately turned to Elaine 
Paige, his original leading lady from "Evita".  He knew that the 
woman who propelled "Don't Cry for me, Argentina" into a No. 1 hit 
could do the same for "Memory."

"The very first time I ever heard ('Memory')," said Paige from her 
London home, "when Andrew played it for me at his house, I knew I was 
hearing a great song.  Not only because it was a marvelous melody, 
but because it did something to me emotionally.  I was desperate to 
sing it.  I had an immediate passion - no, an obsession - to record 
it.  Even after all this time, the melody still haunts me."

So 17 years later, when Lloyd Webber asked Paige to reprise her role 
for the film version, she immediately said yes.

"I didn't get to recreate Evita," she says a little testily, though 
without taking Madonna's name in vain, "so I was glad to recreate 
Grizabella."

The actress saw the role through different cat's eyes this time out.

"When you're 17 years older," she said, "you've had that many more 
life experiences.  And because this is a cat who has lived, and 
suffered, and endured, I felt that I had grown into the role in a way 
that I couldn't have even envisioned back then."

Nevertheless, Paige enjoyed the job more than she had in the past.

"My problem with playing Grizabella in the London production was that 
I was always off-stage when everyone else is on.  So I got very 
lonely just standing in the wings alone."

With the stop-and-start nature of making a movie, though, Paige had 
plenty of opportunities to get to know her castmates.  They include 
Ken Page, who played Old Deuteronomy, the fat-cat leader of the 
brood, in the original Broadway production.

And then there was a significant new cat on the block:  No less than 
Sir John Mills (an Oscar-winner for "Ryan's Daughter" as Gus, the old 
"theater cat" who ruminates how "the theater is not what it was."

You can't prove that claim by Andrew Lloyd Webber, who went on to 
write the scores for "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Sunset 
Boulevard."  For the acclaimed composer (on whom Queen Elizabeth last 
year bestowed the title of Lord) the filming of "Cats" in 1998 
coincided with his 50th birthday.  That was enough cause for a 
celebration held in Royal Albert Hall in London this past June.  It, 
too, was preserved on a video that will broadcast early next year.

In the meantime, now and forever, it will be "Cats", even more than 
the Energizer Bunny, that will keep going and going and going.