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Cats star's surprise return

Kevin Bourke

OVER THE MOON: The Cats crew are back

WHEN Cats closed in the West End on May 11 last year, nearly 9,000 performances had been staged, making it one of the longest-running and most popular musicals ever.

The Andrew Lloyd-Webber show, based on TS Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book Of Practical Cats, first opened on May 11 1981. Since then, it has grossed in excess of $2bn worldwide and has been seen by over 50m people in 11 different languages in over 300 cities.

Its big hit song “Memory” has had nearly 53,000 plays on radio and TV in the UK alone and airplays in the USA passed the 2m mark in 1998.

After the final show in London, Chrissie Hammond, who had played Grizabella for the previous two-and-a-half years, never thought she would be playing the part again.

Yet, less than a year later, she’s back in the role in the touring production, which comes to the Palace for a three-and-a-half-week run.

“I honestly expected that it would feel more odd than it does. In fact, it feels strangely odd and comforting, like going back to boarding school - if I’d ever been to one,” admits the Australian-born singer.

“It was such a big deal when Cats closed that I just didn’t think about it again. I went on to play Mama Morton in the London production of Chicago (alongside Marti Pellow), so then, when they asked me to play Grizabella in the touring show, I really was taken completely by surprise.

‘Addictive’

“Until then I hadn’t realised that I’d missed the silly old cat! The other thing is that I’ve been a singer for virtually all my life and when you get to sing a song like Memory, that’s so technically difficult and where you have to go out there and bare yourself every night, that becomes addictive.

Hammond, whose musical career began with a role as Mary Magdalene in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar, will be playing the role for 10 months on the new tour.

“Well, being on the road for that length of time is very much a double-edged sword,” Chrissie admits.

“Obviously, it’s good to know that you’ll be working for that long, but, on the other hand, you have to accept that you’ll be out of touch with people who are close to you. But, maybe because I’m older, I find myself in more of a non-panic zone about perhaps not working."

Her recent work has included stints with the rock bands Air Supply and Cheetah, as well as tours and albums with keyboard legend Rick Wakeman.

Of course, touring the world with keyboard legend, Rick Wakeman, has got to be a bit more perilous even than venturing to the Press Club here.

“I miss being with Rick desperately,” she admits. “You know he and the drummer, just about as soon as we started rolling anywhere, would start talking about football… and they’d still be at it seven hours later, even though the rest of us would be tearing our hair out!."