Glamour cat Delta in town

Goodrem has switched her piano for a tattered grey coat, wig and a junkyard, to play Grizabella, the ‘‘glamour cat’’, in the Australian production of Cats the Musical, which is based on T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.

Goodrem has signed on to play the role in Sydney, Hobart and Melbourne, with the Andrew Lloyd Webber spectacular hitting Tasmanian shores from December 10.

It has been a decade since Goodrem last performed at the Derwent Entertainment Centre, which was in 2005 during her The Visualise Tour.

The pop sensation – whose new song Wings recently hit number one on the ARIA charts – said she was ‘‘super excited’’ about performing Cats in Tasmania.

‘‘That will be a great week and I want everyone to get to the show,’’ Goodrem told The Sunday Examiner in the upstairs foyer of Sydney’s Capitol Theatre, before the show’s Australian opening late last month.

‘‘A couple of the cast members had said there was an amazing gallery, so we might try and do that while we are there.’’

Cats marks a musical theatre debut for Goodrem, but it might not be her last.

‘‘It feels like this thing ‘where have you been all my life?’ with the cast, the crew and the theatre,’’ she said.

‘‘It feels very natural, after all these years doing music in Australia, for my heart to then be able to do singing, dancing, acting all in one.

‘‘I’ve definitely fallen in love with it.’’

Goodrem has been watching her own two cats, Priscilla and Venus, in order to transform into Grizabella.

But she says, they are not the best cats to learn from.

‘‘My cats wouldn’t be great on stage,’’ she said.

‘‘They are a bit more of the snuggly cats.

‘‘I’ve definitely been learning from these incredible people (other cast) to find the feline nature within us.’’

It is Goodrem’s own experiences that have helped her connect with the role of Grizabella, which was created for singer Elaine Paige and was first imagined as an older cat, past her feline prime.

Grizabella sings the show’s most well known number Memory.

‘‘You don’t have to be an old cat to have experienced a lot,’’ Goodrem said.

‘‘I know I can relate to that, in the sense that I’ve had a very colourful life. I don’t have to be much much older to feel the moments that she’s felt.’’

However, Grizabella has been made a lot younger in this re-invented production. Former Pussycat Dolls singer Nicole Scherzinger played the role when the show was first revised at the London Palladium last December.

Goodrem was then picked by Lloyd Webber to play the role in parts of Australia. Goodrem admitted Cats was not a musical she grew up with.

She said the first time she was introduced to it, was about a year ago, when she met the show’s associate choreographer and director to Gillian Lynne and Trevor Nunn, Jo-Anne Robinson.

‘‘I did Phantom of the Opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, but I didn’t know Cats,’’ she said.

‘‘But I think that’s been perfect for me to be able to find my own Grizabella.’’

She said she loved the ‘‘kookiness’’ and ‘‘quirkiness’’ of the show.

‘‘It just felt exactly like the right fit for myself,’’ she said.

‘‘With pop music we don’t do two shows a day, so that will be a new experience doing the matinee.’’

You may spot Goodrem as another cat earlier on in the show, but she is hard to pick. As for her future in the musical world, she said she would follow wherever it led.

‘‘This is a total dream come true to be this character and be part of this production. Wherever fate should lead, I’m looking forward to it.’’

Cats, which centres on the night of the Jellicle Ball and sees each character tell their own life story, is one of the longest-running shows in West End and Broadway history. It  premiered at the New London Theatre in 1981.

Since then, it has shown in more than 30 countries, translated into 15 languages and seen by more than 73 million people worldwide.

Email: mdadson@fairfaxmedia.

com.au

Twitter: @ManikaDadson

MIAOW

WHAT: Cats the Musical.

WHEN: December 10 to December 13.

WHERE: Derwent Entertainment Centre, Hobart.

TICKETS: From $79.90. Ticketmaster 13 61 00 or ticketmaster.com.au