Were Thomas Stearns Eliot to return to us today, it would be a delight to inform him of the flourishing existence of an honorable successor to his 1922–1939 arts journal The Criterion. Other likely topics of conversation would have to be handled more diplomatically.
“So,” one imagines the poet asking, “Which of my works has proved the most durable with the public?”
Shifty glances all around. “Well . . . ”
“Is it The Waste Land? Surely it’s The Waste Land?”
“Er, not that one . . . ”
“Prufrock then? Not surprising, really.”
“Actually, it was upon the stage that you achieved your widest reach.”
“Murder in the Cathedral! I knew it!”
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, Eliot’s volume of light verse intended for his godchildren, appeared in 1939, a few months after Eliot shuttered The Criterion. The book was a childhood favorite of the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, who in the late 1970s began setting its poems to pop-rock music. As if on a dare, the unlikely resulting musical Cats appeared on stage in London in 1981 and on Broadway in 1982, establishing that an elaborate gimmick could command the imaginations of throngs of theatergoers. For nearly a decade, the show topped the list of Broadway’s longest-running productions, but after closing in 2000 it was surpassed by Lloyd Webber’s own The Phantom of the Opera. It remains fourth on
