In the lobby right after Cats was over, I overheard one audience member say to another: "This is why New York is the greatest theatre city in the world." He was right, and--in spite of the ribbing that this musical gets--he was not alone in his opinion. At that performance, and at the 7,000 or so that preceded it, just about everyone in the Winter Garden Theatre was enchanted by this bewitching and spectacular piece of stagecraft known as Cats.

I'm not babbling hyperbolically here: on this, my fourth visit to the venerable Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, I found that I liked Cats more than ever. What I marveled at most was the brilliance and seamlessness of its construction: How the theatre [...]