Revival vs. innovation
The Reinvention lens
A revival can be a faithful copy or a wholesale reimagining. The titles the industry keeps crowning again are the ones being argued over — each return a referendum on how much to preserve and how much to remake.
Case in point
When a revival stops reproducing
Cats began in 1981 as pure spectacle. Its reconception as Cats: The Jellicle Balldrags the same score through Harlem ballroom and vogue culture — same songs, an entirely new argument about who the show is for. That's the far end of the spectrum from faithful revival: the past reused as raw material, not relic. The mutation point is almost always a new director or choreographer — the person who decides what the title is allowed to mean now.