Review: 'Cats' is a horror … and an occasional hoot

There is a strange scene - OK, there are many strange scenes - near the end of "Cats," the flailing feline phantasmagoria coming soon to a movie theater and/or shroom party near you. A bright new morning has dawned in London, and Old Deuteronomy, the wisest of the city's scruffy tribe of jellicle cats, leans back to consider the surreal activities of the night before. Played by Judi Dench under what looks like a computer-animated shout-out to Bert Lahr's Cowardly Lion mane, she sings a few lines of T.S. Eliot to the audience: "You've heard of several kinds of cat / And my opinion now is that / You should need no interpreter / to understand our character / You've learned enough to take the view / that cats are very much like you."

It's heartening to think that