Chapter 4: Memories

Sunday, July 14, 1985

As planned, we just barely made it to breakfast — but we made it. That was good enough.

After some discussion, we decided to stick to the hotel and Hyde Park for the day. Yesterday had been a long, tiring day. We’d spent a lot of time standing. Even after we’d gotten great seats, we still stood and danced a lot. Combine that with time spent coming and going, and waiting for trains, and we were tired.

‘Tired’ wasn’t ideal for a musical. We wanted to be alert and ready for it.

Angie got me to admit I was seeing a show I’d seen before, but also ‘for the first time.’ No whapping ensued, since I hadn’t volunteered that observation.

Aside from that, they all refrained from guessing, at least out loud. I suspected there were guesses, and I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if the guesses were accurate.

Once we’d settled that, the conversation moved on to plans for the coming days. Jas wanted to know where I’d gone ‘before’ when I went to England. I filled them in, and it turned out that everyone wanted to see the places I’d seen. It was partly because, this way, we’d see them ‘for the first time’ together, but also because they were interesting places on their own.

Before we did that, we had two other things to do. First, we needed to get more traveler’s checks, which just involved visiting an American Express office. Second, and more tricky, we needed to rent a car. Traveling by public transit to the various locations we wanted would be very cumbersome. On the other hand, I was nineteen and in a foreign country, which wasn’t ideal for renting a car.

The solution was to call American Express and get their travel people involved. I did so, and they promised to work on finding a rental car. I also made an appointment for us to get traveler’s checks tomorrow at noon. We didn’t really need an appointment, but there was no harm in having one.

Noon seemed late, but we were going out to a show and would likely be up late. We hadn’t called home last night, but tonight would be a good night to try. It would be late afternoon or early evening in Texas when we got home from the show.

After spending a lazy day hanging out, we headed back to the hotel to change for dinner and the theater. I had been surprised — shocked, even! — to find that very few restaurants (even in the West End) catered to theatergoers who wished to dine before their show. Most stand-alone fine dining restaurants didn’t start serving dinner until eight, long after one’s show would have started.

If one wanted Italian, Indian, or Chinese, things were different, as they were if one wanted to eat at a hotel restaurant catering to regular tourists. We would be wildly out of place in one while dressed for the theater, though.

Amazing as it was for Americans, many theatergoers sat down to dinner after the show at perhaps eleven at night. I would never sleep after doing that (and, indeed, research done in the future indicated late dining was a terrible idea, especially for heavy meals — exactly what one might expect at a fine dining restaurant).

There was an exception, though, and we had reservations there. The Savoy Hotel’s restaurant had a fixed-price pre-show offering that had excellent reviews.

All four of us wore the outfits we’d worn for the first formal night on the cruise. I had my tux with my maroon bow tie and cummerbund, matching Jas’s maroon ao dai. Angie and Paige wore their pale green and pale pink dresses, along with the jewelry they’d bought during the cruise.

There would likely be no photos tonight, but that didn’t matter. We knew what we looked like and already had photos to prove it.

Tonight, we were relying on taxis. One whisked us from our hotel to the Savoy. While I’d been to England before, and driven here, this was my first time being a passenger in a car. I found it pretty interesting seeing English driving from a passenger perspective. The backseat driver in me had to calm down and remember that all was well.

The dinner was everything I’d hoped. Our outfits stood out only a little, not glaringly, with many other patrons also dressed up. The food was wonderful and the service was impeccable. It was definitely expensive, but the tickets for tonight’s show were not, and this was one of those times when the point of having money was to spend it. This would, after all, be all of our first show in one of the major centers of the theater, and not even by excusing Angie and me by relying on the calendar.

We didn’t need to stay at the Savoy. That would have added little to this trip (some, but not a great deal) and would likely have not been money well spent. We might well stay here one day if everything worked out. The math would look very different in that case. For now, White’s Hotel was pleasant enough and fit our budget while still putting us in a great location.

Taxis were waiting in front of the Savoy, so it was a simple matter to hail one and head off to the theater. It was less than a mile, so we easily could have walked it, but the girls were perfectly happy to avoid the walk in heels. It was hardly an expensive taxi ride, either, and — just as before — we had the money, so why not indulge a bit?

When Jas saw the ‘Cats’ marquee, she immediately meowed. Angie and Paige followed her a second later. The driver didn’t react at all, which might have been more amusing than anything else would have been.

Once we were out of the cab, Jas hugged me and said, “Yay! I would’ve been happy with anything, but I was kinda hoping it’d be ‘Cats’!”

“Me, too!” Angie said, grinning and hugging me next.

By the time Paige hugged me, she was already softly singing, “Jellicle cats come out tonight / Jellicle cats come one come all.”

Angie, Jas, and I joined her on the next few verses. We pretty much all knew the soundtrack, though only I had seen it (twice on stage). As we were singing, we got into the line for will-call tickets. There were about twenty people ahead of us, but the line was moving quickly.

While we waited, I said, “I’m not sure if I ever told some of you the story of how I came to first hear the ‘Cats’ soundtrack.”

Paige giggled and said, “And here I thought I’d spoiled it for us back in 1982!”

Jas gave me a quick look, but I shook my head. I could tell this story in a way which wouldn’t be weird.

“So, you all know Dave Mayrink...” I said.

I gave Angie a little nod at her questioning look. The Dave I was referring to was the other one, the one they couldn’t really know.

After that, they nodded.

“So ... his parents took him to New York, and they saw ‘Cats’ there,” I said. “This was back when it was pretty new. Anyway, he loaned me a couple of cassettes of other music — Mannheim Steamroller being the other one I can remember right now...”

“I love them!” Jas said. I already knew that, of course — we all loved them. “That’s where you first listened to them?”

“Yup,” I said.

We got to the front of the line, and I showed the clerk my driver’s license. He produced our tickets and wished us a pleasant evening.

We stepped back from the line, and Paige said, “Anyway...?”

“So, he had this cassette of ‘Cats’ — the cast recording — and he said, ‘You won’t like it. You have to see the show for it to make any sense.’”

Jas grinned and said, “So, of course, you loved it.”

“I did!” I said. “What’s not to love? I’m sure seeing it adds a lot...”

That was an in-joke, one that made the others grin.

“ ... but the soundtrack is brilliant.”

“Totally brilliant,” Angie said. “I’d never heard any of it except ‘Memory’ until I met you guys, though, so you totally get credit in my case, my love.”

Paige blushed, grinned, and gave Angie a quick kiss.

We headed in. Everyone opted to visit the facilities before the show, and then a helpful usher showed us to our seats. They really were pretty good, and I had no doubt Jas would be able to see. If she could, the rest of us definitely could.

We purchased several copies of the playbill (which wasn’t free, unlike at home), with extras to give out. The parents would each get one, as would Steffie and Jess. Angie grabbed one for Marshall, too.

It had been perhaps twenty years since I’d seen ‘Cats’, the last time being watching the direct-to-video version of the stage show with our kids. We’d never seen the much-hated film adaptation, something I was now grateful for. Either it wouldn’t recur in this world, it would be better, or we would all join in mocking it.

Obviously, since I was nineteen, there was no way I could have seen it twenty years ago. Thus, this must be my first time.

No, I didn’t say that. They knew, though.

From the first moments of the show, it had us all spellbound. ‘Cats’ truly had been (or, alternatively, was) transformational to the entire field of musical theater. Critics had written commentary to that effect many times. There was little to compare it to. Perhaps the decision of Rogers and Hammerstein to collaborate was as consequential, but little else could have been.

Nearly single-handedly, it had jolted a somewhat moribund genre into new life. It wasn’t just London and New York. There were established companies for ‘Cats’ in a number of cities (or would be), and it was a hit in all of them.