Now the curtain falls on Cats

It is the longest-running musical in history, but now the original production of Cats, the revolutionary British show that revitalised London's Theatreland and sparked a similar renaissance on Broadway, is to close after more than two decades.

The final curtain will fall on 11 May, 21 years to the day since the show's opening night.

It is understood that the two men behind the show, its creator and composer Lord Lloyd-Webber and its producer Sir Cameron Mackintosh, visited the cast and crew backstage at the New London Theatre after last night's performance to break the surprise news.

Speaking this morning to the Evening Standard, Sir Cameron said the closure of Cats was far from a snap decision: "Andrew and I spoke last autumn about how the show was doing.

"I would say we had started to see the signs over the last couple of years that the show was slowly coming to the end of its life, and we wanted Cats to finish while its coat is still lustrous and it is still the magnificent experience it always has been.

"We didn't want it to keep on running until it became a poor, old, unloved moggy." In London, Cats has run for nearly 9,000 performances, been seen by more than eight million people and earned some £136 million at the box office.

Since 1981, Cats has broken a catalogue of records, and holds the signal honour of being the first British musical staged in Russia where it filled houses during a run at the Theatre Operetta in Moscow in 1988.

Across the globe it has grossed more than £1.4 billion, enraptured more than 50 million theatre-goers in 300 cities and been translated into 11 languages.

Another Lloyd Webber hit, Starlight Express, had its last performance on Saturday after 18 years - however the decision to close that show was made before 11 September, and today Sir Cameron refuted Cats' closure was due to the downturn in boxoffice revenue following the terrorist attacks against America.

He said: "Cats is not the victim of any recent malaise - in fact the January figures in theatres here and in New York are better than we expected.

"However like all these long-running shows, time does eventually take its toll and obviously the fact there have been less international tourists visiting London has affected the longest running shows the most." The show opened in 1981, the year Bill Haley died, Bucks Fizz won the Eurovision Song Contest and Duran Duran debuted in the UK charts.

Alongside the inaugural cast of Sarah Brightman, Brian Blessed, Wayne Sleep, Paul Nicholas and Bonnie Langford, Elaine Paige starred as Grizabella - after Judi Dench was forced to drop out at the last minute thanks to a torn Achilles tendon - and Paige's thunderous rendition of the show's signature tune, Memory, reached number five in the UK charts.

The song has since been recorded by 160 artists and received millions of airplays on radio stations across the world. Today Sir Cameron said Cats was a "pivotal" show in his career as an impresario: "Until Cats I had had some success with Oliver, My Fair Lady and Oklahoma, and it was because of that Andrew and I met in January 1980, realised we had the same dreams about musical theatre and got on very well.

"After Andrew played me the songs I thought 'this is something special', although he admitted everyone else he had played them to thought he was barmy. As I discovered, before the show took off, at least, everyone then thought I was barmy too." The critics were proved wrong. Sir Cameron said: "It's a fantastic, unique achievement that a major musical can run 21 years - when it opened everyone thought it wouldn't run 21 days let alone as long as it has."

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