Chrissie Cartwright

Christine Cartwright (known as Chrissie Cartwright, officially Christine Langham) is an English director, choreographer, and former dancer who has been involved in many different productions of Cats since 1986.

Cats Credits[]

London - 1986 - 2002 - Artistic Co-ordinator

UK Tour I - 1989 - 1990 - Associate Director / Choreographer; Artistic Supervisor

Zürich - 1991 - 1993 - Consultant

UK Tour II - 1993 - 1995 - Associate Director / Choreographer

Antwerp - 1996 - Associate Director / Choreographer

Film version - 1997 - Assistant Choreographer

Berlin - 2002 - 2004 - Associate Director / Choreographer

UK Tour III - 2003 - 2009 - Associate Director / Choreographer

Madrid - 2003 - 2005 - Associate Director / Choreographer

Düsseldorf - 2004 - 2005 - Associate Director / Choreographer

Moscow - 2004 - 2006 - Associate Director / Choreographer

German Tour - 2005 - 2006 - Associate Director / Choreographer

Dutch Tour - 2006 - 2007 - Associate Director / Choreographer

German Tent Tour - 2010 - 2013 - Associate Director / Choreographer

UK Tour IV - 2013 - 2014 - Associate Director / Choreographer

Oasis of the Seas - 2014 - Associate Director / Choreographer

London - 2014 - 2015 - Assistant Director & Choreographer to Trevor Nunn & Gillian Lynne

Paris - 2015 - 2016 - Associate Director / Choreographer

Blackpool & London - 2015 - 2016 - Assistant Director & Choreographer to Trevor Nunn & Gillian Lynne

UK Tour V / Europe / International Tour - Associate Director / Choreographer

Broadway - 2016 - Associate Director / Choreographer

Korea Tour - 2017 - Associate Director / Choreographer

US Tour VI - 2019 - Associate Director / Choreographer

Vienna - 2019 - Associate Director / Choreographer

US Tour VI - 2021 - Associate Director / Choreographer

Australia Tour - 2025 - Associate Director / Choreographer

South Africa - 2025 - Associate Director / Choreographer

Biography[]

Undated
After having received her training at Pattison College in Coventry, Chrissie could be seen in the London casts of Billy, Evita (original cast), Irene, Barnum and Blondel. Her television credits include films like There's Something Wrong in Paradise and shows like The Stanley Baxter Show and The Morecambe and Wise Show as well as three Royal Command Performances. Her film credits include Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Doom, Lassiter and The Great Muppet Caper.

She choreographed and directed musicals like The Art of Noise, Mack and Mabel (Original London production), Annie, Matilda and Sherlock Holmes - the Musical. For television, she directed Kiss me Kate and Alas Smith and Jones.

Chrissie Cartwright was the assistant to Charles Augins for different productions of Five Guys Named Moe and to Gillian Lynne for Cats and The Likes of Us (Sydmonton). She worked as the Resident director of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat and Sister Act as well as the children's director of Mary Poppins.

2025
Chrissie appeared in the original west end casts of Billy, Irene, Evita, Barnum, Blondel and in variety at the London Palladium and Victoria Palace. Television includes The One and Only Phyllis Dixey, There’s Something Wrong in Paradise, The Stanley Baxter Show, The Morecambe and Wise Show and The Good Old Days. She appears in The Great Muppet Caper, Lassiter, Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, and Mama Mia! Here We Go Again.

Chrissie staged and choreographed the original West End productions of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Sherlock Holmes The Musical and the London premiere of Mack and Mabel. She choreographed The Entertainer, Devil’s Virtuoso, Annie, The Card, On The Twentieth Century, Witches of Eastwick and the musical staging for the Showbizpops Orchestra’s concert tour of The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber. For television she choreographed Kiss Me Kate, Alas Smith and Jones, and Hit Dancing.

As associate director and choreographer – the London, New York, and Australian productions of Five Guys Named Moe, worldwide productions of Cats; and, as, associate choreographer, the London and Broadway productions of The Phantom Of The Opera. She was associate to Gillian Lynne on The Likes of Us, Brick by Bricusse and Dear World; was children’s director on Mary Poppins and resident director on Cats, Joseph and His Amazing Techni-colour Dreamcoat, Sister Act, and Wizard of Oz.

Chrissie directed To Gillie With Love at the Gillian Lynne Theatre and was movement director on The Private Ear and The Public Eye and Birdsong for the Original Theatre Company. She is an Honorary Associate of the Royal Academy of Music where she has staged many productions including This is The Hour – a celebration of the music of Claude-Michel Schönberg. She is currently co-choreographing a new UK tour of Miss Saigon.

Cats[]

In 1986, Gillian Lynne made Chrissie Cartwright her new assistant in the London production of Cats. She was the artistic co-ordinator and resident director of this production until its end in 2002. During this time, she also recreated the direction and choreography for the first and second UK tour and for the Belgian premiere in Antwerp. In 1997, she was Gillian Lynne's assistant for the video adaptation.

After the London production had closed in 2002, Chrissie Cartwright recreated the original staging of Cats for the new Berlin production. Since then, she has been responsible for almost every production of Cats in Europe: the third UK Tour (2003), Madrid (2003), Düsseldorf (2004), Moscow (2005), the German tour (2005), the Dutch tour (2006), the German tent tour (2010), and the fourth UK Tour (2013). She was also responsible for the Royal Carribbean cruise ship productions of the show on the Oasis of the Seas.

In 2010, Christine directed a production for the Arts Educational Schools in London.

Chrissie Cartwright was Trevor Nunn's and Gillian Lynne's assistant for the London Revival that started in December 2014. Later, she staged the Paris production and the fifth UK Tour. She assisted Trevor Nunn and Andy Blankenbuehler for the Broadway revival and US Tour 6, staged the 2017 Korea tour, and continues to work with productions worldwide.

Interviews (2025)[]

Interview with Rheinische Post^[1]

"Cats" in Düsseldorf – what is the secret of the musical's success

Chrissie Cartwright has been accompanying the musical classic "Cats" as a director and choreographer for almost 40 years. She is currently preparing the premiere in Düsseldorf. She reveals how to learn to imitate cats - and whether she can still hear "Memory".

There is an English proverb that doesn't translate really well into German: "The proof of the pudding is in the eating". Often inadequately translated as "Trying is better than studying". The original quote can be wonderfully transferred to the British export hit that has been creeping and purring across the stage since 1981. Not only because cats like to lick pudding (if it's not behind closed doors), but because the success of the play wasn't really predictable.

Paid content From April 10, the kitties from "Cats" will roam the stage of the Capitol Theater. In Düsseldorf, they will be on display in an original English recipe from London's West End. To do this, take the poems and worlds of thought of a Nobel laureate in literature, an outstanding composer, a gifted choreographer and a director versed in Shakespeare. At the beginning – here we come back to the pudding – you weren't sure if the audience would like it. Can you turn children's poems into musical theatre? Is it possible to develop the story of the play during rehearsals? Isn't it silly when adults pretend to be animals?

In the end, the audience "tasted" excellent. Andrew Lloyd Webber (music), Gillian Lynne (choreography) and Trevor Nunn (director) created a musical classic with "Cats" that scratched many records: more than 73 million viewers worldwide, in the top ten of the longest-running plays on Broadway in New York and in the West End in London.

"Memory" is the most famous song from "Cats", which quickly tells stage history: The stray cats – the Jellicle Cats – meet at the junkyard for the annual ball, where one of the group is granted a new life. During the show, different types appear: from the troublemaker Macavity to the coquettish Bombalurina, the sad Grizabella and the wise leader Old Deuteronomy.

The cats have strutted through almost 30 countries and more than 300 cities in the 44 years since their premiere. This requires an experienced tamer. Chrissie Cartwright has been the mother of the kitties since 1986 and guardian of the "Cats" universe. She watches over the musical productions of the classic. "It's an extraordinary legacy that needs to be preserved," says the former dancer, who learned the dances of the piece but never stood on stage as a cat herself.

The choreographer and former ballerina Gillan Lynne (1926-2018), who designed the choreographies for "Cats" and "Phantom of the Opera", brought Cartwright to the "Cats" in London's West End as assistant to the artistic director. No one knows the cats as well as they do. She has accompanied countless productions all over the world. "Yes, I know all the dialogues by heart," she says with a laugh. Beyond the well-known songs, the piece lives from the choreography. "The story is told in dance. It takes ballet, jazz dance, acrobatics, and you have to learn to move like a cat," says the choreographer.

At the beginning of each production, the actors crawl across the stage on all fours to empathize with the cat cosmos. "We have to observe. We used to go to the zoo for this, but today we watch videos on the Internet. We want to imitate cats, not make a caricature out of them," says the choreographer. Even after more than 40 years, she says: "No two productions are the same. The storytelling is adapted to the performers in each case."

Currently, the cats are "hunting" audiences again. In Germany, the musical classic starts its tour on April 10 in Düsseldorf. But the "Cats" are also lolling on the stages in South Africa and Australia this year. The secret of success is easy to explain for Cartwright: "The play has magic in it. It appeals to everyone, children and adults. And it deals with topics that are more relevant today than ever: redemption, forgiveness, tolerance, benevolence."

After more than 40 years of working with the cats, the choreographer still loves the song "Memory". "It doesn't come from T.S. Eliot's 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats' like most of the other songs, but emerged from his poem 'Rhapsody of a Windy Night'," says the choreographer. "'Memory' is such a beautiful song. At most, I'm tired of it for a short time when I've heard it 20 times in one day in the auditions." But pudding should not be eaten in the morning, at noon and in the evening.

Interview with Theatre Scape Cape Town^[2]

SPOTLIGHT: Chrissie Cartwright excited for Cape Town to experience the musical wonderment of CATS

Perpetuating the directorial legacy of Trevor Nunn, UK-based Chrissie Cartwright is currently in Cape Town as Associate Director and Choreographer of CATS, that opened at Artscape on 10 December, 2025.

With nearly four decades of curating Lloyd Webber's vivid musical behind her, she has every reason to inspire confidence as she takes over the reins from Assistant Director and Choreographer Matt Krzan, who did valuable preliminary work with the cast ahead of her arrival here just a month ago. Under normal circumstances she would have taken charge from the start, but professional commitments in the USA (working on Miss Saigon) made this impossible and she says she was happy with the standard of performance awaiting her.

Taking over a production shaped by other hands is nothing new for her: CATS opened in London in 1981, and had been running for five years when Cartwright first encountered it; she was tasked with refreshing it, as a lustrum of performance had dulled rather than enhanced its gloss. "I was really thrown in the deep end there," she recalls. Fortunately the young, inexperienced recruit to that production was undaunted by the responsibility of taking on and continuing work devised by legendary Dame Gillian Lynne, who originally choreographed CATS. "The main challenge was to address cast changes for a musical which demands, more than most, proficiency in the triple threat - not easy to find." Auditions for such a show focus perforce on the feasibility of training executants whose talent is not equal to all three branches of the performing arts, however impressive they may be in one or two. Cartwright comments that of the dreaded trio, singing is the most essential to be honed to the requisite standard: "With singing, there is nowhere to hide, whereas with dancing in an ensemble, a misstep is not disastrous... obviously, it also depends on the specific role being filled.”

She feels strongly that the approach to casting must be stringent in assessing a candidate's ability to reach the level demanded by the work. For her, another sine qua non in the 30-strong cast of CATS is, quite simply, enthusiasm. She considers commitment and belief in the message of the show are key to a production of integrity, much as she values sound technique. Respect for the latter is what she learned from Dame Gillian, whose style marries jazz with ballet, the signature choreography of this musical.

Here technical prowess trumps physique for the dancers in the show, who, while they must all attain the same high level of execution, are not perfectly matched in height or build: "They do not all have to have the same physical attributes, as, like cats, they come in different shapes and sizes. What matters is personality and stage presence, as well as the excitement they bring to their performance."

On the subject of the show's content, she waxes lyrical about the inclusive humanity of its theme: "It's a story of redemption and forgiveness which drives the spirit of Christmas and deserves to be told clearly and cleanly," she asserts. She goes on to cite the impact of the narrative on a 9-year-old Romanian boy refugee who saw CATS when living in England after the overthrow of his country's government and its attendant suffering. "If a child of that age could grasp the message, it says a lot..." No further words are necessary.

Cartwright will stay to see the VIP opening night performance of this CATS on 14 December, but leaves for home immediately thereafter, handing over her dual role of Associate Director and Choreographer to LAMTA 's Duane Alexander as Resident Director and Choreographer.

She sums up her experience of Cape Town and its artists as "very positive; I love your city, and am enjoying the cast's good humour and steady growth in confidence as we make our way through the singing, dancing and story-telling of this wonderful show.”