The latest revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats, which closed this weekend at the Perelman Performing Arts Center in New York City’s financial district after multiple extensions, may well be one of the most significant and influential theater revivals in recent memory. Not only was the production genuinely enjoyable and moving, it is a perfect demonstration of how ingenuity and creativity can completely reimagine a classic piece of art for a new audience and a new generation.

Not About Cats

According to legend, when Webber approached director Harold Prince in the early 1980s to gauge his interest in directing the musical, Prince struggled to find some hidden meaning in the script that he could bring to the surface in his direction. Webber reportedly told him, “Hal, it’s about cats,” and Prince passed on the project.

More than 40 years later, adapters and co-directors Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch found the hidden meaning that eluded Prince. Instead of humans playing literal cats, this production made “cats” and “kittens” terms of endearment for the very human members of different drag houses. The Jellicle Ball became a competition among those houses for prizes in various categories. As each queen sang about his, her or their life, they danced, strutted, posed and fought for their trophies, sometimes winning and sometimes being defeated by another challenger.

Perhaps most significantly, Levingston and Rauch changed very little of the original book or lyrics—a significant accomplishment when so many revivals only begrudgingly acknowledge that the book was adapted from the original, and rarely give credit to whoever made the changes. The songs and stories that made Cats into a classic were kept in place, and the new concept stretched to fit the preexisting material rather than the other way around.

The new interpretation didn’t always fit the new material perfectly, of course, and the adherence to the original framework sometimes prevented some moments from achieving all they could: A moment that pointed out how drag balls have operated outside the law and participants risked arrest (or worse) ended abruptly because Webber and the original creative team never wrote a scene about a cat fighting a prejudiced legal system. The scene still was very good, of course, but the framework of the original book prevented it from going deeper than it could have.

In the grand scheme of things, of course, this is a small quibble about a production that, overall, rarely was less than excellent. By maintaining the classic structure of the show, Levingston and Rauch emphasized their respect for the original and its legacy.

Reimagining and Adapting

Finding the balance between reimagining and respecting original work can be a struggle for the creative team of any revival. Carbon-copy replicas rarely bring much new to the proverbial table, but rewriting the material can feel dismissive of an artist’s work—or worse, like revisionist history. Cutting racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic language from an older work can certainly help an audience feel more comfortable, but it also runs the risk of whitewashing the sins of the past. The 2019 revival of Oklahoma! kept such potentially offensive elements in place and used them to emphasize how the original musical fantasy of America’s westward expansion left women, People of Color and people with disabilities out of the narrative.

But Levingston and Rauch found that balance with this production. While maintaining the utmost respect for the source material, they found a unique, inventive way to make Eliot’s poetry and Webber’s music tell a new story. It is exactly what a good revival should do, and it can serve as a lesson for future reimaginings of classic shows.