“This is control. This is control. Tonight is the most important night in the history of the world.” If, like me, you have ever fallen in love with Starlight Express, these words will bring a hit of nostalgia and a rush of excitement. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s show gave my generation of stage geeks one of our first proper experiences of musical theatre. But after more than 7,000 performances in the West End, it closed in 2002, leaving us with our cast recordings to cling to and the inability to visit Pizza Express without humming its name to the tune of Starlight Express.
The original London production opened in 1984, the year I was born. It cost £2.25m to put on, partly because of John Napier’s vast wraparound set which converted the auditorium of the Apollo Victoria theatre into a racetrack. When you consider the concept, it sounds like the rambling of a drunk: “So, basically, a child’s train set comes to life and the engines race to be the fastest in the world. We’ll include a love story between steam train Rusty and first-class carriage Pearl. His rival, Greaseball, will be a sendup of Elvis. Everything about Electra will strongly suggest he’s bisexual – let’s call his first song AC/DC. How about sticking in a bridge which spins in every direction?”
It could have been an easy way to lose money but Starlight ran for 17 years, earning over £140m at the box office and spawning productions in New York, Vegas, Japan and Australia. The original show was completely reworked in 1992, removing some songs and adding new ones (including the famous megamix), along with simplifying the story and souping up the lighting and special effects. Back then, it was as immersive as theatre got. I first saw the show aged eight and remember the roller-skating cast, dressed up as trains, zooming around a track inches from my face. I pestered my parents to play the cassette in the car so much that it wore out.
I learned every word and performed my own version of the show at home. I would don a catsuit and Rollerblades and stick a toy train to a helmet. Our patio became the stage for me to show that – as Rusty says – “nobody can do it like a steam train”. I saw Starlight six times in the West End and then once more on a UK tour that I honestly wish I’d never seen. Crammed into a small theatre, without the excitement of the track, the show was naked: the music wasn’t as good and the lyrics felt decidedly dodgy.
As a child, I’d wanted to see Starlight again and again. I still do. And that’s how I find myself in Bochum, Germany, where – amazingly – more than 16 million people have sat in a purpose-built theatre to watch the show performed in German since it opened almost 30 years ago. The mostly British cast have had to phonetically learn how to sing in German, with the song Freight easily transforming to Fracht but He’ll Whistle At Me becoming much more of a mouthful as Dann Pfeift Er Mir Zu.
For the first time, the 40-strong cast are performing in English and I once again hear: “This is control.” With the rest of the packed audience, I let out a whoop of excitement because tonight is race night. I travelled to Germany with some trepidation. I didn’t want to find out that I’d grown up and Starlight hadn’t. After years of going to the theatre I didn’t want to feel jaded. I wanted to feel like a kid again.
At Bochum’s Starlighthalle theatre the lobby is a Victorian train station: exposed brickwork, buffet carts for snacks, bronze statues of the characters and an old-fashioned flip down departure board listing the cast. The stage itself is more sports arena than proscenium arch. The playing space is full of hydraulic bridges, lasers, a triple-level racetrack and seats on four levels including fully rotating swivel chairs for those audience members in the pit. So much happens in so many places that it’s almost overwhelming, as I take in everything from the 80s shoulderpad-inspired costumes (which I still desperately want) to the inline skaters who perform stunts and tricks, flipping treacherously high in the air before landing with a thud right next to you.
The cast are as much athletes as actors – not triple but quadruple threats. Their singing, while high-speed skating, seems effortless – which is even more impressive considering they rehearsed the English version in just three weeks for this one-off performance. So many of the songs were already embedded deep in my brain but I’d forgotten The Rap, suggesting Lord Lloyd-Webber was way ahead of Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda. I was sad to discover that the jaunty Lotta Locomotion had been thrown out and replaced with the Little Mix-esque number Whole Lotta Locomotion but another new addition, I Do, is a real earworm of a love song. It’s composed by Lloyd Webber’s son Alastair which is a sweet touch because Starlight was originally written for his children.
I’d forgotten how Starlight looks different to any other show. The skates give it a unique flow and pace. Arlene Phillips’s choreography gives the trains human form, capturing the sense of locomotions’ movement without ever feeling repetitive. I bump into Arlene before the show and she tells me that there are “quite extraordinary” plans for Starlight’s 30th birthday in Bochum and that Lloyd Webber is cooking up ideas for new songs and characters. But this is a show that remains relevant partly because there is no relevance whatsoever to it. Starlight Express is simply a child’s imagination made real.
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