Cats

Cats (1998) is a filmed stage recording of Andrew Lloyd Webber's record-breaking musical — watch it online on iFILM. Directors David Mallet and Trevor Nunn captured the original London cast, with Elaine Paige leading the ensemble.

The source is T.S. Eliot's 1939 verse collection Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. Once a year the Jellicle tribe gathers for a midnight ball: each cat steps forward with their story, and Old Deuteronomy picks one to ascend to the Heavyside Layer and start a new life. Elaine Paige's Grizabella — once magnificent, now exiled from her own kind — delivers "Memory" at the centre of the stage. Macavity, the mystery cat, never quite appears in the flesh.

The original West End production ran from 1981 to 2002 — twenty-one years straight. This 1998 recording predates the 2019 Hollywood film by two decades and captures what made the show so durable: Gillian Lynne's choreography and voices that only exist in live performance. Stream Cats (1998) online on iFILM.