‘Cats’ Just Keeps on Purring Toward a Record 6,138 Lives

NEW YORK — When you think about finding steady work in this town, you might consider the police or sanitation departments, maybe the school system. And, of course, there’s always “Cats.”

Always, always. Just ask Ethan Fein, a graying 49-year-old who plays guitar in the 25-member orchestra. He bounced from weddings to bar mitzvahs for years. Then came Oct. 7, 1982, at the Winter Garden Theatre: opening night for “Cats,” the musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber based on a collection of cat poems T.S. Eliot wrote for his godchildren. There in the hidden orchestra pit sat Fein, less gray and happy to be working. You’ll find him there still.

“This is my first steady job since 1969,” Fein says.

And he laughs. You have to laugh if you’re in the music or theater business and you find yourself being handed a paycheck week after week with no end in sight. Nice mix: the glamour and prestige of Broadway, the security of the U.S. Postal Service. That’s “Cats,” as the show’s slogan goes, “Now and Forever.”

The first time that motto appeared in a big New York Times advertisement, the show had not yet completed its second week on Broadway. Even in Chutzpah City, the slogan must have seemed a tad bold.

Now, nearly 15 years later, it seems only fitting. With performance number 6,138 on Thursday night, “Cats” tops “A Chorus Line” as the longest-running show in Broadway history.

It’s also the longest touring show in American theater history, with one company remaining from the four that once crisscrossed the country.

Naturally, all this record-making calls for hoopla. There was enough of that months before the show opened in New York, enough to drum up $6.2 million in advance ticket sales, enough to have one newspaper writer wondering if “Hype the Cat” should be added to Eliot’s clowder of Practical Cats.

Now, like “Gus: The Theatre Cat,” the “Cats” gang has made history, shifting the hype machine into overdrive. Broadway will be closed to traffic between 50th and 51st streets after Thursday night’s special early performance. After the final curtain call, cast and audience will surge into the street, where Lloyd Webber and other “Cats” creators will be honored in a ceremony that ends in a blaze of lasers, sweeping searchlights and showers of confetti. City officials will be on hand, celebrating a cash cat whose impact on the city’s economy has been estimated at $3.12 billion.

After the party is over and the street is swept clean, it’s back to work on Friday. Another day at the shop for Fein and his colleagues, several of whom have been there since Day One.

There’s Marlene Danielle, who was an understudy when “Cats” opened and for 13 years has played Bombalurina, a red-white-and-black cat who is onstage for almost the entire two-hour, 15-minute show, dancing, singing, slinking around.

“There have been days when I’ve been extremely tired, achy,” Danielle says. But it’s still fun, she says. She has yet to walk through the stage door on Seventh Avenue thinking, “Oh God, I’m so bored.”

Other opportunities have come up over the years, but the grass has never seemed greener than where she stood. She’s sustained by the challenge of maintaining the energy the role demands and following the dictum of one of her acting teachers, the one who said you always play the part as if “you’re hearing it for the first time.”

John Kievit, the house electrician and member of the original crew, doesn’t get bored seeing the show thousands of times. He claims to be one of the half dozen or so Americans who have never seen “Cats,” at least not all the way through. He sees bits and pieces of it while working lights and smoke effects and supervising a crew of 10 electricians.

Just the other night, he got to sit in the audience and watch three numbers.

“I liked it,” he says. “It’s a good show.”