West End Wednesday: STARLIGHT EXPRESS
Starlight Express is a 1984 West End musical with music and lyrics by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Richard Stilgoe. The musical tells of a young steam engine called Rusty, who wants to take part in a great train race to impress first class carriage Pearl.
The musical came to fruition through a variety of combined ideas. Around 1974, Lloyd Webber wanted to adapt Reverend W. Awdry’s Thomas the Tank Engine books into an animated series with him providing the music. He obtained the rights and the pilot was filmed before producers ultimately passing because they didn’t think it had enough global appeal. Lloyd Webber also wrote a song entitled ‘Engine of Love’ for American soul singer Earl Jordan who had the capability of singing three notes at once in the style of a steam whistle (this song can be heard in some productions of the musical today.) Lloyd Webber was then asked to write songs for an animated movie of Cinderella featuring a great train race. Although this project then went into development, the composer couldn’t shake the idea of a project involving trains. Based on the success of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, Lloyd Webber asked his friend and lyricist Richard Stilgoe to adapt it as a concert for schools. They also presented some of it at Lloyd Webber’s Sydmonton Festival where director Trevor Nunn saw it and it believed it had the potential to be a huge theatrical spectacle. Together, the three developed the idea of a musical about a great train race and choreographer and set designer Arlene Phillips and John Napier came on board with the infamous idea to have the cast perform the show on roller skates. The first act of the show was workshopped to success in 1983 and greenlit for a full-scale West End production.
Starlight Express opened at the Apollo Victoria Theatre on 27 March 1984. The set featured racetracks extending into the auditorium, flush to the dress circle as well as a huge steel bridge that lifted and tilted to connect races to various tracks throughout the course. The cast included Ray Shell as Rusty, Stephanie Lawrence as Pearl, Jeff Shankley as Greaseball, Jeffrey Daniel as Electra and Frances Ruffelle as Dinah. The production was a hit with the audiences from the off. In November 1992, the production was relaunched with severe revisions. Many songs were cut with new ones added, characters deleted, plot points re-ordered, and train races restructured. The “New” Starlight Express carried on running at the theatre for another decade before closing on 12 January 2002. Although the production shut down for revisions, it is still classed as one continuous run, making the production one of the longest running shows in West End history.
The Broadway production opened at the Gershwin Theatre in February 1987. The transfer retained the original creative team with substantial changes to the plot, including changing the race to a localised challenge across America in pursuit of the ‘Silver Dollar Trophy’. This was the first production to include the Earl Jordan song ‘Engine of Love’. The cast consisted of Greg Mowry as Rusty, Reva Rice as Pearl, Robert Torti as Greaseball, Kenneth Ard as Electra and Jane Krakowski (in her Broadway debut) as Dinah. Although successful, the Broadway production didn’t prove as much of a hit as its predecessor and closed on 8 January 1989. The production was nominated for seven 1987 TONY awards, with John Napier winning for ‘Best Costume Design’.
In June 1988, Starlight Express opened in Bochum, Germany in a purpose-built theatre. The production again reunited the original creative team, as well as new co-director Dion McHugh. This production followed the Broadway version more closely, but still underwent revisions meaning that there were three alternative productions of the same show running concurrently worldwide. The Bochum production is still open to this day, having stopped during the pandemic. In 2017, Lloyd Webber visited the production and due to various revisions over the years deemed the show “unrecognisable”, going so far as to threaten closure if the show didn’t go back to its roots. After a rewrite and a workshop at the Other Palace in 2017, the production was again altered, with some genders of the carriages changing in a bid to also make the production less “sexist”. The production closed for a month in 2018 to accommodate the changes, with the original creative team overseeing, and now with Lloyd Webber claiming that this is the definitive production of Starlight Express.
The production has been performed internationally and toured on a reduced scale over the years, with the use of 3D to accommodate the inability to provide a full train race in certain venues. A 90-minute straight through production was also produced in Las Vegas between ’93-’97, directed by original choreographer Arlene Phillips. The production featured the original Pearl and Rusty from Broadway and was the first permanent legitimate musical production in Las Vegas.
Besties, if you haven’t listened to this British classic, then I think you know what to do.
Cast recording available on streaming services.
FACTS:
Music: Andrew Lloyd Webber
Lyrics: Richard Stilgoe
Theatre: The Apollo Victoria
Run: 27 March 1984 – 12 January 2002 (7,409 performances)
OLIVIERS:
(NOMINATIONS) Best New Musical, Best Actor in a Musical – Lon Satton
TONYS:
(NOMINATIONS) Best Musical, Best Original Score – Andrew Lloyd Webber and Richard Stilgoe, Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical – Robert Torti, Best Direction of a Musical – Trevor Nunn, Best Choreography – Arlene Phillips, Best Lighting Design – David Hersey.
(WON) Best Costume Design – John Napier
