CATS Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park W1

A LEGEND REBORN On a sweltering opening night under the trees, what more can you ask than fresh life and passion flung into a famous show which had become, frankly, a bit of an eye-roll? And suddenly to find that it’s a 19-year-old understudy playing the crucial leading-lady role and doing the big (and often hackneyed) number Memories with such intensity, soaring purity and breaking emotion that a reputation is made while you watch. It was a terrific night for Taziva-Faye Katsande, and us. And we got a great deal else from director-choreographer Drew McOnie’s vigorous, eerily beautiful revival. I last saw CATS at the end of it’s 21-year London run, still with the Gillian Lynne choreography and Nunn’s determination to have the cats roaming the stalls. It felt, somehow, wincingly tired despite the familiar scatter of memorable numbers: hard to believe that it won an Oscar and a Tony and kicked off the global-British-musical phenomenon. Some songs were good, but who cared any more? Then…