PBS aired a 7m 42s clip on June 18, 2026, in which Jeffrey Brown spoke with Andrew Lloyd Webber about the way he creates musicals. The conversation was framed around his work and the enduring pull of Cats, giving viewers a direct look at how one of theater’s best-known composers thinks on the page and at the piano.
The timing matters because Cats: The Jellicle Ball is one of the biggest hits on Broadway right now, and it has already won three Tony Awards. In the segment, Amna Nawaz noted that the production had received nine Tony Award nominations, a sign that this reimagined version of Cats has moved well beyond nostalgia and into the center of the current Broadway conversation.
That makes the interview more than a profile piece. Cats, based on T.S. Eliot’s poetry about a tribe of felines called Jellicles, has long been one of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s defining works, and the new production shows how that material can be reworked for a fresh audience without losing its hold on the stage. The PBS arts and culture series CANVAS used the moment to connect the original musical’s legacy with a version that has already been widely praised.
The friction is in that split identity: Cats: The Jellicle Ball is both a reimagined take on a legendary musical and a Broadway success with major awards already in hand. That is exactly why the clip lands now, because viewers are not just hearing about a revival of a familiar title — they are seeing how Andrew Lloyd Webber’s own creative logic travels into a production that is winning on its own terms. For readers following his work, the larger question is not whether the show matters, but how much of the original impulse still drives the music that keeps returning to Broadway. For more on that continuing thread, see Michael Crawford hints at possible reunion with Andrew Lloyd Webber and Andre De Shields joins Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats celebration on West 44th Street.
