Starlight Express is now playing at the Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre. BOOK TICKETS
Starlight Express has an odd history. It’s the middle child of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s megamusicals, awkwardly wedged between Cats and The Phantom of the Opera. Its songs have always been regarded as its weakest element, second only to its razor-thin plot about a steam engine who wants to win the big race and learns to believe in himself thanks to the power of the titular mythical locomotive. It may be more accurate to treat choreographer Arlene Phillips and set and costume designer John Napier as the true auteurs behind the success of the original 1984 West End production. Indeed, Napier is the one credited with the idea that the actors should perform entirely on roller skates.
Since its inception, the show has been a frequent recipient of cheap dunks from people who don’t particularly care for musicals poking fun at the idea of a show about singing trains. Even within broader musical theatre fandom, it’s developed a cult following with little to none of the artistic credibility that a cult following usually implies. The core fanbase is built on people who have fond memories of seeing it in person, either the long-running productions in London or Bochum in Germany, or on one of its many tours. Theatre aficionados who only had the cast album with which to form an impression of the final product have often been less charitable towards it. This is how, despite having its defenders, Starlight Express became the musical that musical nerds love to hate.
All this is to say that this new production at the Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre comes with some baggage. However, a show that’s known for being all sizzle and no steak might have an advantage that it wouldn’t have had in the past. In this post-pandemic era, we all need a lot more convincing that it’s worth our time and money to leave the house, and you can’t stream spectacle. The venue is a former television studio, which theoretically should offer maximum flexibility for creating the immersive experience promised by the marketing. But, in practice, this amounts to a cavernous, windowless foyer with multiple mirrorballs and not much else.
Within the auditorium itself, it becomes clear that the show could probably have done with less foyer and more stage. The Apollo Victoria is one of the West End’s largest theatres, meaning that the original production team were able to install train tracks for cast members to whizz around the audience on multiple levels of the house. While this stage does include a track that encircles the premium-priced seats, the entire studio environment is so small in comparison that it has a restrictive effect on the choreography. The dances feature a lot of arm action and far fewer of the more daring stunts and jumps seen in previous iterations.
But such changes come as no great surprise. The show has been in constant flux since the beginning, with songs and characters being added and dropped in just about every version so far. However, the changes made in this production seem specifically geared towards “cleaning up” the show on multiple fronts.
Right from the beginning, the show was pitched as fun for all the family. The action is ostensibly taking place inside the mind of a child playing with their toy trains. But, at the outset, the lyrics were littered with sleazy double entendres. Although the costumes have been an ever-changing component of the show, designs frequently suggest an aim to appeal to the parents in the audience. So, out go the codpieces and leg-baring leotards. Instead, Gabriella Slade’s costumes seem broadly inspired by anime aesthetics. They coordinate well with Tim Batley’s vaporwave set design, but not so much with older, surviving elements of the show. For example, one of Rusty’s two rivals in the race is Greaseball. As the name suggests, this character was originally styled as a greaser with a love of bodybuilding and played by a male actor. Here, Greaseball has been changed to a female character. She keeps her signature song, Pumping Iron, where she belts out how much she loves to flex while her girlfriend Dinah fawns over her. On paper, it’s an inspired change, but instead of having an Elvis pompadour and matching swagger like her predecessors, she sports a couple of massive metallic pauldrons like a Saturday morning cartoon villain. The lyrics say Muscle Mommy, but the costume says Rita Repulsa.
And that’s Starlight Express in a nutshell. Forty years of accumulated tweaks, adjustments and retools have made it a grab bag of styles and tones. It might seem superficial to focus on the aesthetics. But the plot is so flimsy that it’s not even worth giving a second thought; aesthetics are all you have to work with. As with every production since the original run, the changes are likely to cause consternation amongst the diehard fans. But it has plenty of energy and variety for the uninitiated looking for an evening’s entertainment, possibly with a couple of kids in tow.
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