By AILEEN BURKE
News Editor
News was recently dropped that Taylor Swift has joined a truly all-star line up of celebrity star power in the soon to be made film adaption of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s iconic stage musical, Cats. She confirmed the announcement by posting a selfie from her trailer through her Instagram page.
The film and the show that it is based on centers around – you guessed it – the life and times of some random street cats. The audience follows the entirely musical story of the self-proclaimed “jellicle” cats and centrifugally, Grizabella the Glamour, or Glam, Cat as she tries to make it to the Heaviside Layer (a metaphorical heaven for cats) and start a new life for herself.
Cats is one of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s most famous works, although he is the most well-known for being the brain behind the longest running Broadway musical in history, The Phantom of the Opera. Webber is also responsible for Evita, Sunset Boulevard, and Jesus Christ Superstar, which was recently done in a live studio production by NBC.
Swift is set to play ‘Bomblurina’, who is one of the Macavity cats. The Macavity cats are ‘Bomblurina’ and ‘Demeter’; the two sing a song about ‘Macavity’, who is called the Mystery Cat. There is no news as to who will fill the other role in the duet, but Macavity will be played by Idris Elba. Elba has recently been seen in Luther, Thor, and The Mountain Between Us with Kate Winslet.
Many fans of the production speculated that Swift would have played ‘Victoria’, the all-white cat that Lloyd Webber composed a new song for in the film version. Nonetheless, ‘Victoria’, as a performer, is supposed to be a highly trained ballerina, which Swift undoubtedly is not.
These characters were originally introduced in poet T.S. Elliot’s book “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” in 1939. The stage show was brought to Broadway by Lloyd Webber in 1996, and had a historically long run; Cats currently sits as the fourth longest running show in the history of Broadway.
The production was so wildly popular that it did receive a video recording towards the middle of its run in 1998, with a home release on VHS. It will be interesting to see what a full-fledged film production company can do with a musical that is as simple as Cats is fundamentally; all that is needed is a mountain of trash for scenery. The rest of the show is contingent on the talent; it is musically heavily, and traditionally dance-intensive.
Swift joins the likes of Late Late Show host James Corden; Jennifer Hudson, who is Grizabella; Idris Elba; Rebel Wilson; Jason Derulo as ‘Rum Tum Tugger’; and Dame Judi Dench; they all will play fellow cats in the film. The movie is under the direction of Tom Hooper, who has worked on films such as Les Miserables, The Danish Girl, and The King’s Speech. Hooper won best director for The King’s Speech from both the Academy and the Director’s Guild of America.
Cats is set to be released by Universal Pictures on Dec. 20, 2019.
