Cats: The Jellicle Ball is based on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Cats.
Cats premiered in London’s West End in 1981, with music by Webber and lyrics largely drawn from T. S. Eliot’s poetry. Its story follows the Jellicle Cats as they gather for an annual ball and await Old Deuteronomy’s choice of one cat to ascend to the Heaviside Layer.
The Jellicle Ball is not a separate Webber musical. It is a reimagining of Cats that relocates the action into New York’s queer ballroom scene, using voguing, runway categories and house-style presentation alongside the original score. That distinction can cause confusion because the production has its own subtitle and radically different visual language.
Webber’s other musicals include Evita, Sunset Boulevard and Starlight Express, but none is the source material for The Jellicle Ball.