The South African musical Kat and the Kings is starting a six week tour through The Netherlands in Rotterdam at the Luxor Theatre, Sept. 29. They will tour The Netherlands until November 7. Kat and the Kings won the 1999 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical, beating other nominated musicals Rent, Saturday Night Fever and Whistle Down The Wind. The cast won collectively the award for Best Actor in a musical. The show played at the Vaudeville Theatre in London's West End, March 23-Aug. 1, 1998 and was the first South African musical to open in London since the advent of majority rule in South Africa. The musical has had several successful runs in South Africa and is currently playing at Broadway's Cort Theatre, where it opened Aug. 19. The original London Cast recording was released in the USA on First Night Records.

Based on the real life memories of the shows original star Sallie Daniels, Kat and the Kings gives a glimpse of the "Cape Coloured," or mixed race community of Cape Town, through the story of a talented but "non-white" young band that couldn't compete with apartheid.

Cast members of the Dutch tour are Danny Butler, Elton Andrew, Kurt Herman, Ashley Washing, Emraan Adams and Tertia Botha. David Kramer, who also co-wrote the musical with Taliep Petersen, directs the musical.