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Trevor Nunn, 42, is a professional sorcerer. Last year he led his Royal Shakespeare Company to a Broadway triumph with his 8½-hr. production of Nicholas Nickleby. But Nunn had never directed a full-scale musical, and initially he had reservations about Lloyd Webber's project. "For popular theater to succeed," he says, "it has to have a narrative spine, and the Book of Cats is anthological. I told Andrew to round up two pianos and five performers and do the piece in a very small theater." A few months later, Lloyd Webber showed Nunn an unpublished Eliot cat poem sent to him by the poet's widow Valerie, about a woeful demimondaine named Grizabella. "It hit home all Eliot's themes of time, age, mortality and change," Nunn says. "After reading that poem, I told Andrew that the jigsaw had come together. We would create a serious show—and make Grizabella central to the story."
Betty Buckley, the Broadway Grizabella, stands off to one side of the rehearsal hall, a study in pensive alienation, her farm-fresh face set off by cheekbones so beautifully defined that you could cut your finger on them. The day before, she and Nunn had spent a 2½-hr. session analyzing his lyrics to Cats' haunting hit ballad Memory (one of two lyrics based on Eliot's poetry but not written by him). "Trevor's so insightful it's spooky. He's spooky," she says. "He likes to work with a lot of mystery. During our talk, I was dying for the whole meal, but I got just the salad and first course." Buckley is called for her first solo—and her body droops into the walk of an animal old before its time; her face turns haggard, wary, with a residue of pride. She sings, and her crystal voice cuts the air, transforming the workroom into a Broadway stage, a theatrical epiphany.
The work continues. It is Labor Day, 2½ weeks before the first preview, and the cast cats scat through their warmups. An assistant choreographer calls out a step: "One two three, paw paw. Then you go.' Anna McNeely, a pudgy redheaded doll who plays the finicky Gumbie Cat, practices a two-step endlessly, expressionlessly, in front of one of the huge mirrors. Donna King, one punk pussycat with coal-black hair and a Kabuki-white face, achieves the mystery of felinity by puckering her lips and wiggling her tail. Two dancers, passing each other, mew and rub shoulders. And then, in the middle of a group number, the hum of energy is pierced by an agonized scream. Willie Rosario, who plays the strutting Skimbleshanks, is writhing on the floor in the twin pains of torn knee ligaments and the bitter awareness that his big shot at Broadway stardom has just backfired. Choreographer Lynne assures him, "If you can get back here by opening night, Oct. 7, you'll find Skimbleshanks waiting for you."
If Lynne, 53, were not so resilient, she might need some consoling herself. Lynne was responsible for every bit of movement onstage, while Nunn concentrated on creating a narrative and giving character to the various roles. In the London production she gave Cats shape and style, integrating the stretching, apparently boneless feline movements with the rat-a-tat precision of Broadway choreography—only to have the show criticized by some visiting American writers for lacking a high "pizazz quotient."