| Facts About The Fastest Musical On Earth! | • After a run of 18 years and 7409 performances Starlight Express was the second longest-running musical in British Theatre history, behind Andrew Lloyd Webber’s other smash-hit musical CATS. • New casts attend skate school prior to opening in the show. Skate school runs for 4 weeks prior to 7 weeks of vocal, staging and choreography rehearsals. • During the course of the London production, 20,000 pairs of skate laces, 25,000 skate wheels and 15,000 toe stops were used. The skaters got through 1,200,000 boxes of tissues and 12,000 gallon bottles of water. 2,000 pairs of false lashes, 8,000 tins of base make-up and 2,000 tubs of make-up remover were applied. • The top speed recorded by a skater was 40 mph during a rehearsal. • STARLIGHT EXPRESS is the first UK musical to feature polaroid 3D technology. |
Fans of musical theatre have their cake and eat it too in this innovative production of the Lloyd Webber hit. Upon entering the theatre, you can collect a pair of 3D glasses or 'safety goggles,' a sign of fun to come if ever there was one. With spectacular skating stunts, floating screens, 3D footage and all the old tunes, they've really put together a visual spectacular.
The stage sports a hydraulic ramp which facilitates the flips and jumps of the cast. Between scenes, it divides into quarters as more skaters pour out from within. Some clever coordination means that there are no collisions on the crowded stage, which is a marvel in itself! The cast are a multi-talented bunch, combining stunt-precision skating, acting, dancing (on wheels) and of course, some great vocal performances. Draped in dazzling costumes by John Napier, characters like Electra and Greaseball light up the stage. The plot is admittedly a little thin. Essentially, it's a series of races between trains from different countries. There's the defending champion from the U.S., Greaseball, a macho diesel engine; Electra, an electric engine with fabulous turns; and Rusty, a steam-powered engine who is trying to win back his girl, Pearl. The races themselves are delivered via the 3D screen. I've never actually experienced effective 3D action, but this production will have you ducking and doging debris! You'll giggle when the cuckoo flies out into the audience. After he has sung his heart out about his lost love, Rusty decides to go up against the macho trains and win back Pearl, the carriage who has 'coupled' and 'un-coupled' from the other two contenders. Musically, Starlight Express is a curious mix of styles with rock, country & western, and some dated rap numbers all jockeying for position as some of Lloyd Webber's least memorable tunes. The highlights are of course, the title theme, 'Starlight Express' and 'U.N.C.O.U.P.L.E.D' - nicely done among the frantic pace of the rest of the work. The band are excellent, particularly the brass, and each song is brought to a suitably well-arranged climax. This is a quality staging. If you're a fan of people singing lines of conversation, you'll adore this first class trip! You'll have to be fast to catch Starlight Express at the Empire from June 22nd to July 30th. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Radio Merseyside's Spencer Leigh reviews Starlight Express. “Starlight Express” is an ingenious musical because it takes a series of children’s books, those about Thomas the Tank Engine, and transforms them into a musical that can be enjoyed by the whole family. The musical was first staged in the West End in 1984 and it featured the most contemporary of all Andrew Lloyd Webber’s scores, so contemporary that Lloyd Webber gives the trains a new coat of paint every few years. Strangely though, this is a musical without hit songs. The concept musical is performed with tremendous verve and enthusiasm by a cast of 23 who can all sing, dance, act and, most important of all, roller skate – often at speeds of 40 miles an hour. There were no names I recognised in the cast as presumably star attractions do not care for such a rigorous discipline and also this is an ensemble piece which works perfectly well without the cost of celebrities. As it stands, “Starlight Express” is a very expensive operation involving 200 people in its production and the latest in technology. Strangely, no one is credited with the book, but the storyline is mundane and simply there to showcase the special effects. It involves a race between trains of different nationalities – Japan, America, Russia and the UK – and different sources of locomotive power – stream, diesel and electricity. It is evident within the first five minutes that the British underdog, a steam train called Rusty, is going to win and become the Starlight Express. As the other nationalities have bad points (for example, the American train cheats), it is perhaps surprising that “Starlight Express” has been an international hit. Ignore the razzamatazz: the main ingredient in a musical has to be the music, and here it works very well indeed. I’ve found Richard Stilgoe, a Liverpool College old boy, a smug performer on stage, but he is as good a lyricist as he thinks he is and no one could accuse him of being mundane. Once he has an idea he pursues it in the best possible way. I loved the wit about how to write a blues song in “Poppa’s Blues”, which is excellently performed by Anton Stephans. Tanya Robb scores well with the hilarious Tammy Wynette pastiche, “U.N.C.O.U.P.L.E.D”: just when you think that Stilgoe has run out of jokes, he comes up with another. However, the amount of sexual innuendo in a show that attracts a children’s audience is overdone. The sassy and androgynous electric train, Electra, sings, “AC/DC, It’s okay by me, I can change my frequency.” The female dining car, Buffy, sings “Buffy at your service, Ever open wide.” This is a train? This time the musical has been revamped with a couple of new songs from Lloyd Webber and the lyricist David Yazbek, who wrote “The Full Monty”. One of them, the ballad, “Only He”, sung by Jane Horn and James Gillan, could easily be a hit song. The score includes rap, funk, soul and rock’n’roll, but the songs are more pastiche than original. You can, for example, sing the Everly Brothers’ “Price Of Love” to the opening song, “Rolling Stock”. You can spot “Thriller”, “Saturday Night Fever” and plenty of Elvis in there. Electra is Rum Tug Tugger and Poppa is Old Deuteronomy from “Cats” on roller skates. The vibrant musical possesses its greatest originality in its staging. When I saw the show in London, the tracks ran round the auditorium and the skaters would almost hurl themselves into the audience. This is impracticable for this, the first UK tour, which is playing one theatre after another. Here at the Empire “Starlight Express” was performed on an extended stage and the three races are shown on a screen, which we watched with 3D goggles. Although rather repetitive, this worked surprisingly well and showed that the next step may be a film version. Will there be a role for Ringo Starr in that? “Starlight Express” received a standing ovation and it should do very well during its five weeks at the Empire. Despite my reservations above, I was on my feet cheering with the rest of the audience. Spencer Leigh. |
