Rum Tum Tugger Will Rap in the West End Revival of ‘Cats’

Yes, Andrew Lloyd Webber's oft-ridiculed musical based on a series of T.S. Eliot poems about felines is getting a revival next year in the West End, and the Associated Press reports that this time around, Lloyd Webber has decided to make Rum Tum Tugger a "rapping street cat."  Lloyd Webber is crediting an American-born expat poet, whose anti-Semitism and racism has often been cause for condemnation and debate, as the inventor of an African-American tradition. "The thing about the Eliot verse is that you can tell he's American. Nobody other than Eliot would have written 'The Rum Tum Tugger is a curious cat,'" Webber continued.  Of note, musical theater is aligning itself with rap these days: at the Tony Awards, Hugh Jackman said that Music Man composer Meredith Wilson "might have actually created one of the very first rap songs ever back in 1957," and then proceeded to rap the opening number, "Rock Island," with LL Cool J and T.I.