CATS

CATS is coming to the Liverpool Empire Theatre from 5 to 15 May, a ten-day run that brings Andrew Lloyd Webber's long-running musical to the city. It's a show that's been around since 1981, when Lloyd Webber created it alongside Cameron Mackintosh, and it's based on T.S. Eliot's 1939 anthology Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.

Rather than a conventional musical theatre plot, the show is built around a single event: the Jellicle Ball, a gathering of a local tribe of street cats that happens once a year. The ball is presided over by Old Deuteronomy, the elderly and respected leader of the tribe. From there, the evening unfolds as a choreographed jamboree of different cats sharing their stories, with the score doing most of the heavy lifting. You'll recognise characters like Macavity, and the chart-topping hit 'Memory' is the one that usually sticks with people long after the curtain goes down.

It's a Broadway classic, originally directed by Trevor Nunn with choreography by Gillian Lyne, and later updated by Andy Blankenbuehler. The whole thing runs about two hours and twenty minutes, including one intermission, so you'll have a bit of a break in the middle. If you've never seen it, it's a good place to start with Lloyd Webber—familiar songs and a lot of movement on stage rather than a heavy plot to follow.

It plays at the Liverpool Empire Theatre from 5 to 15 May, so you've got a good window to catch it across those ten days.