Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats Headed Back to the West End; The Wizard of Oz Eyes Broadway

Really Useful Group, theater titan Andrew Lloyd Webber’s London-based producing organization, will bring a revival of Cats to the London stage in 2013 and is reportedly considering a Broadway transfer for the currently running West End The Wizard of Oz, according to Variety.

Cats, originally produced by Really Useful Group and Cameron Mackintosh, premiered in London on May 11, 1981, and played 8,949 performances before its final performance 21 years later on May 11, 2002. The revival is reportedly in development to return to the West End in 2013, again co-produced with Mackintosh. No details of the production have yet been announced.

The Wizard of Oz, which stars Michael Crawford in the title role, began performances at the London Palladium on February 7, 2011. No details about the possible Broadway transfer have been announced, but the West End production recently extended its booking period through February of 2012. “Michael Grandage's production of Evita is on Broadway in 2012,” Really Useful chair Mark Wordsworth told the trade paper, “and The Wizard of Oz will go at some point."

As previously announced, Evita is slated to arrive on Broadway in the spring of 2012 starring Ricky Martin and Elena Roger. The production began in London in 2006 with Roger in the title role, and will open at an as-yet-unspecified Nederlander theater directed by Grandage and choreographed by Rob Ashford.