Cats - Musical

Cats é um musical composto por Andrew Lloyd Webber que teve sua estréia em Londres em 1981, mas que se consagrou por mais de vinte anos em cartaz na Broadway. Para realizar esse espetáculo, Llyod Weber musicou uma série de poemas de T. S. Eliot sobre gatos e acrescentou um roteiro, onde Memory foi uma das suas músicas de maior sucesso.

No musical, os gatos jellicle, palavra que só eles sabem o seu significado, se reúnem uma vez ao ano para que seu líder escolha um e apenas um deles para ir a um lugar melhor. Entre os personagens mais marcantes estão Munkustrap, o narrador da história, Grizabela, the glamour cate "Old Deuteronomy", o líder dos jellicle gatos.

Essa obra é tida como uma das maiores produções da Broadway, e já foi vista por mais de 50 milhões de apreciadores, num total de 45 mil apresentações.

Memory:

Jellicle Songs For Jellicle Cats 

 

Algumas estrofes do poema:

JELLICLE CATS
Are you blind when you're born? Can you see in the dark?
Can you look at a king? Would you sit on his throne?
Can you say of your bite that it's worse than your bark?
Are you cock of the walk when you're walking alone?

Because Jellicles are and Jellicles do
Jellicles do and Jellicles would
Jellicles would and Jellicles can
Jellicles can and Jellicles do

When you fall on your head, do you land on your feet?
Are you tense when you sense there's a storm in the air?
Can you find your way blind when you're lost in the street?
Do you know how to go to the Heaviside Layer?

Can you ride on a broomstick to places far distant?
Familiar with candle, with book and with bell?
Were you Whittington's friend? The Pied Piper's assistant?
Have you been an alumnus of heaven or hell?

We can dive through the air like a flying trapeze
We can turn double somersaults, bounce on a tire
We can run up the wall, we can swing through the trees
We can balance on bars, we can walk on a wire

Can you sing at the same time in more than one key
Duets by Rossini and waltzes by Strauss
And can you (as cats do) begin with a C
That always triumphantly brings down the house

Jellicle cats are queen of the nights
Singing at astronomical heights
Handling pieces from the Messiah
Hallelujah, angelical choir

The mystical divinity of unashamed felinity
Round the cathedral rang "Vivat!"
Life to the everlasting cat!

Practical cats, dramatical cats
Pragmatical cats, fanatical cats
Oratorical cats, delphioracle cats
Skeptical cats, dispeptical cats
Romantical cats, pedantical cats
Critical cats, parasitical cats
Allegorical cats, metaphorical cats
Statistical cats and mystical cats
Political cats, hypocritical cats
Clerical cats, hysterical cats
Cynical cats, rabbinical cats

There's a man over there with a look of surprise,
As much as to say, "Well now how about that!"
Do I actually see with my own very eyes
A man who's not heard of a Jellicle cat?
What's a Jellicle cat? What's a Jellicle cat?