Andrew Lloyd Webber Thinks 'Cats' Could Use More Rap

Legendary musical theatre composer Andrew Lloyd Webber is using the London West End revival of his iconic production Cats to make what he sees as some long-awaited, much needed changes to the 33-year-old-musical – starting with injecting a dose of hip-hop into the character of Rum Tum Tugger.

Based on Old Possum's Book Of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot, the revived Cats run is slated to be staged at London's Palladium for 12 weeks from the start of December, and the good Lord is gunning straight for Rum Tum Tugger before the show premieres, saying he was never happy with the character's song, and that he would be recast as “a street cat for today”.

“I came to the conclusion, having read Eliot again, that maybe he was the inventor of rap,” Lloyd Webber said of the planned change. “His metre for the Rum Tum Tugger is so wonderful … it raps.

“The thing about the Eliot verse is that you can tell he's American; nobody other than Eliot would have written, The Rum Tum Tugger is a curious cat.”

The urbanisation of R. T. Tugz is not the only change in store for the long-standing musical, which opened at the New London Theatre in 1981 – no doubt feeling the show's age, Lloyd Webber has seen fit to update parts of its set, which will now see contemporary items such as mobile phones grace the stage, as well as giving Growltiger's Last Stand – “never my favourite moment,” he said – an overhaul.

The Cats revival is slated to commence on December 6, and reunites Lloyd Webber with his original crew, including inaugural director Trevor Nunn.

Deflecting a concern that altered or revised shows are innately an inferior prospect to the original, Lloyd Webber said: “I don't think that is necessarily true, because, if you said that, we wouldn't have a lot of room for Shakespeare.”