앤드류 로이드 웨버의 뮤S. 엘리엇 시의 각색연구

Abstract

This study is an attempt to analyze the issues of patriarchy and gender in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s adaptation of T. S. Eliot’s verses to produce the 1981 megamusical Cats. Reading the textual differences of Eliot’s original poems and Lloyd Webber’s adapted lyrics in terms of patriarchy and gender, this study puts a focus on the concepts of ‘fallen woman’ and ‘phallic woman’ in the light of the gendered reception of the female protagonist Grizabella the Glamour Cat and her historical predecessor Mary Magdalene, the female prototype of ‘fallen woman’ in the biblical era. Lloyd Webber’s adaptation of T. S. Eliot’s poems offers the spectators of Cats the chance to identify the foregrounding of gender issues by Grizabella regardless of her creator Lloyd Webber’s creative intention to regale his audiences. Let alone Lloyd Webber’s authorial design, the spectators and reviewers of Cats tend to miss or underestimate the problematics of aging, gender and patriarchy, which construct Grizabella’s subjectivity because spectacles overwhelm spectators’ desire to seek coherent story of the ruined Grizabella. The influence of Thatcherism of 1980s will be a clue to appreciate the political context of the theatrical spectacles in Cats.