File:Sydney 1987 closing cast.png

Description
The 15 original cast members of the 1985 Sydney Production who remained till closing on 1 August 1987. (Only 14 cast members are pictured, and the article later contradicts itself and says only 14 orignial cast members remained.)

Full article: The Sydney Morning Herald. Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. 01 Aug 1987, Saturday.

Page 3. Farewell to multi-million dollar Cats By PETER COCHRANE, Arts Editor. Two years and four days after its opening in Sydney, the show that struggled to find backers finally closes at the Theatre Royal tonight. Cats, an almost plotless musical based on a series of poems T. S. Eliot wrote for his godchildren, has grossed $28 million at the box office, of which $8 million is pre-tax profit. It now moves to Melbourne, where a run of at least 18 months is expected. Fifteen original cast members remain with the show, including the one-time King of Pop, Jeff Phillips, who has played Rum Tum Tugger, eight performances a week, including matinees on Wednesday and Saturday, since July 1985. He has missed 10 performances. It's a close-knit cast, he said this week, happily furnishing some details which will not appear on any balance sheet. "In two years we've seen three divorces, one engagement and three or four heavy love affairs." Phillips compares the show's success to Thriller (the Michael Jackson album) and the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper. Go into any coffee shop in Sydney and I guarantee that you will find at least 10 people who have seen Cats at least once. "This week we are finishing as we started with full houses. On Tuesday night we got a standing ovation. Wow!" Surely he meant, miaow ! PAGE 50: The Cats phenomenon.

Page 50. Cats pack up their wigs and whiskers By PETER COCHRANE. ITS curtains tonight for Grizabella, Rum Tum Tugger, Old Deuteronomy and the other, frolicsome felines who have occupied one of the world's most expensive garbage tips since July 1985. The Sydney production of Cats will close at the Theatre Royal after two years and four days. During that record occupancy, the show has been seen by nearly 800,000 people and grossed an unprecedented $28 million. It's not the end for Cats in Australia of course. The show is moving to Melbourne to open on October 10. Already bookings total $4.5m. Production administrator James Thane expects Cats to run for at least 18 months in Melbourne before its potential audience is exhausted. While not everyone's dish of cream, its influence on theatre-going habits is profound. When Cats opened in Sydney on July 27, 1985, musical theatre was in the doldrums. Co-executive producer Kevin Earle believes it single-handedly revived the genre, to the extent that musicals, both imported and homegrown, dominate today's box office. Cats's influence is also felt today in ticket prices, bookings, marketing and merchandising. In 1985 theatre-goers were asked to pay a then unheard of $35 for the privilege of seeing 35 men and women, in wigs and whiskers, prowl around a set of oversized car tyres, tennis racquets and fish bones. They were told that the show would not come to them, regardless of whether they lived in Adelaide or Auckland; that they would have to come to Cats. Supported by a $500,000 advertising campaign (hung on the slogan "The longer you wait, the longer you'll waif and those ubiquitous cat's eyes) and boosted by the extraordinary success of productions on the West End and Broadway, Cats inveigled theatre-goers to part with $5m in advance bookings. A London critic called it "an expensive bit of fluff. While its score is largely forgettable, with the exception of one hit song repeated ad nauseam on radio in the early days its balance sheet is not so easily dismissed. The Sydney production cost $3m to produce, and more than $200,000 a week to maintain. Cameron Mackintosh is spending a further $I.8m to transfer Cats to Melbourne, including $725,000 on upgrading the rundown Her Majesty's. Wigs for 16 new cast members will cost $1,500 each. Total costs for the Sydney run amount to about $20m. Pre-tax box office profit then is $8m. Add to that the return from $3.7m worth of merchandising (Cats Aussie barbecue aprons. Cats unisex nightshirts, Cats fridge magnets) and you've got the biggest success story in theatre history. You've also got 423 New Zealanders smiling like Cheshire cats. They invested an average of $NZ 12,000 ($A 10,250) each in the Australian production when no potential local backer would touch a musical based on a collection of T. S. Eliot poems written for children. John Gow, then head of Challenge Corporate Services, an Auckland-based investment bank, recalls being "literally laughed out of Sydney's merchant banks" when he tried to raise finance here in early 1984. A Wellington merchant bank was interested, but two days before the deal was due to be cemented, the NZ dollar plummeted in value and the bank's risk increased 20 per cent. Bankers exit stage left. Left without a corporate backer, Mr Gow turned to his own clients. They contributed $500,000 in cash; the rest came from a loan by the merchant bank Partnership Pacific. According to Mr Gow, the return after two years is more than 200 per cent comparable to that of Les Miserable in London and New York. Cats, however, was only the beginning for these Kiwi capitalists. In January 1986, Mr Gow formed Strada Holdings, which took over management of the Cats partnership. Strada is now the major independent source of finance for the West End and Broadway. Its present portfolio includes Follies, Chess, Phantom of the Opera and Les Liaisons Dangereuses in London, and Les Miserable, Me and My Girl and Starlight Express in the US. A Strada Entertainment Trust was recently listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange, which is seeking $NZ5m ($A4.2m) to bankroll L'S national tours of Les Miserables and Me and My Girl. Ironically, Strada rejected Cameron Macintosh's offer of a 100 per cent interest in the Sydney production of Les Miserables, which opens at the Theatre Royal in November. "It's no reflection on Cameron or the show." Mr Gow said this week. The decision was based purely on our reading of the theatre-going market in Sydney. "We were nervous. Cats was a hit for us but the next three shows Guys and Dolls, Me and My Girl and La Cage aux holies I all big-budget musicalsl were flops." Les Miserables is now being financed by eight investors, including lloyts Entertainment, which has a stake of just under 25 per cent. Reminded that the advance for Les Miserables now stands at $2.4m, and is expected to exceed that of Cats, Mr Gow was philosophical: "I'm thankful that we made the wTong decision the right way around." Easing the pain are the returns from the umpteenth revival of The Rocky Horror Show. Described by Mr Gow as a "nice, tight little number", Rocky Horror is packing them in Melbourne and will begin its fourth Sydney run at the Theatre Royal in September.

The Cats phenomenon Opened: Sydney's Theatre Royal (capacity 1,053), July 27, 1985; closed August 1, 1937. Opens Her Majesty's, Melbourne (capacity 1,1 00), October 10, 1 987. Expected run: at least 1 8 months. Sydney advance: $5m; Melbourne advance (bookings opened early April), $4.6m. Total Sydney performances: 847; total audience: 170,000; average nightly attendance; 93 per cent of capacity box office gross: 528m; pre-tax profit: $8m. Sydney staging cost: $3m, plus weekly running costs of $200,000 plus; total costs, about $20m. Cats payroll: 160, including a cast of 34 (14 originals remain). Merchandising turnover (Playbill Australia): $2.75m. Biggest seller, apart from T-shirts and soundtracks, the Cats mug, now also being produced for the London, New York and Vienna productions. Coming soon: Cats Christmas cards (for Melbourne season). Travel packages: Total, 131,000; breakdown: country NSW, 15,000; Victoria, 65,000; Queensland, 8,000; SA, WA and Tasmania, 3,000; New Zealand, 40,000. Total Cats gross worldwide since 1981: about S240m ($113m from 2,000 Broadway performances alone).