Starlight Express
Quite possibly the most aggressively ‘80s artefact in existence, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Starlight Express’ is a musical about anthropomorphic roller skating trains that often feels like being forced to watch ten consecutive episodes of some trashy Saturday morning action cartoon. It’s loud. It’s dumb. It barely has characters in any meaningful sense. Richard Stilgoe’s lyrics are kind of anti-Sondheim: it’s a show that makes your brain contract with every second that passes.
And yet to complain ‘Starlight Express’ isn’t very clever is like complaining tigers aren’t very good at accountancy. It exists as pure spectacle, and where the original production ran out of steam on the West End way back in 2002 (after a near 18 year stint), this revival from ‘& Juliet’ man Luke Sheppard supercharges it.
Staged at what would appear to be enormous expense, the nouveau ‘Starlight Express’ has given Wembley’s hi-tech but hitherto under-utilised Troubadour Wembley Park a real sense of purpose. The production is billed as ‘immersive’, and while I’d argue that’s a stretch, the reconfigured auditorium - designed by Tim Hatley - is extremely cool, with the audience divided into little seating areas that the roller skating actors whoosh around at roughly head height.
Oh yeah, roller skating. Ultimately ‘Starlight Express’ is inseparable from its original conceit, which is that the actors playing the trains skate around the venue. Maybe one day after it’s fallen out of copyright somebody will...