The surreal world of the highly-acclaimed musical CATS will transform Eisenhower Auditorium at 8 p.m. tonight, Wednesday night and Thursday night.

Great talents have contributed to the musical. Its music was created by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

"The imagery that Eliot created through his poetry enhances the characters on stage so you can identify with them readily," said Travis DeCastro, assistant theater professor, who worked with the show in New York.

The characters act in a junkyard at night, where the personalities of the idiosyncrastic, playful CATS are revealed and the death of Grizabella, the glamour cat, takes place.

"There's not much to the story," DeCastro said. "But it's very glitzy. It's very unusual to see a bunch of felines jumping around on stage."

There are about 2,000 props in the set, created by John Napier. Eight hours are necessary to prepare the stage for the presence of the felines.

"That's an unusually long time," Carolyn Rinaldi-Lieb said, publicity coordinator for the Center for Performing Arts.

But the complexity of the sets demands the time, she added. Even offstage, the walls will be decorated, strung with electric lights.

The performers, too, have extra work to do preparing themselves to go onstage. Pounds of makeup will be used in a single production to create the cat-like look of the characters, as well as wigs made of yak hair, which is durable and holds shape well. Only Grizabella has a wig made of human hair.

"It becomes routine. There's a schedule that everyone follows. . . . It's just a lot of makeup to put on," DeCastro said. It takes the performers a couple of weeks to learn how to apply their makeup, he added.

Since its opening in 1981, the show has run non-stop. Along the way, the original cast garnered the Grammy for Best Cast recording in 1982 and '83 and received 7 Tony awards, including Best Musical.

DeCastro saw many reasons for the crowd CATS continually draws.

"It has some very singable melodies so that there's something to hang on to when you leave the show," DeCastro said. Also, it's a family show, and not that many open in New York, he said.

All three nights of the show are sold out.