Cats (musical) Cats (musical) Cats is a sung-through musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" by T. S. Eliot. The musical tells the story of a tribe of cats called the Jellicles and the night they make what is known as "the Jellicle choice" and decide which cat will ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new life. Directed by Trevor Nunn and choreographed by Gillian Lynne, "Cats" first opened in the West End in 1981 and then with the same creative team on Broadway in 1982. It won numerous awards, including
T. S. Eliot of choice. I settle upon a particular emotional situation, out of which characters and a plot will emerge. And then lines of poetry may come into being: not from the original impulse but from a secondary stimulation of the unconscious mind." Eliot also made significant contributions to the field of literary criticism, strongly influencing the school of New Criticism. He was somewhat self-deprecating and minimising of his work and once said his criticism was merely a "by-product" of his "private poetry-workshop" But the critic William Empson once said, "I do not know for certain how much of my own mind