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'Cats': Spay It

'The fundamental wrongness ... never dissipates," says critic Scott Tobias.
In Tom Hooper's adaption of the musical <em>Cats</em>, Ian McKellan stars as Gus, one of the jarring Jellicle cats.

From the moment Andrew Lloyd Webber decided to set the T.S. Eliot poetry collection to music, has felt like an escalating series of dares, or a Bialystock & Bloom scheme that accidentally became one of the biggest sensations in Broadway history. It did not seem likely that a plotless revue where cats either introduce themselves or introduce other cats would ignite public interest. Or that Grizabella's ascendence to the Heaviside Layer would last longer than the

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