THE SEATS TO BUY OR AVOID AT THIS SHOW
(seen at the second preview performance – 9th June 2024)
Following the impossible-to-buy-tickets-for that was “Cats” in 1981, teenage monkey remembers being first in line for “Starlight Express” in 1984, and saw it very soon after press night.
Too many years later, it wanted to ensure once more that it would ‘touch the starlight’ sooner rather than later. While the show will probably have speeded up during previews (if the skaters’ boots hold out – some splits in them after 2 shows is worrying), it saw more than enough to form the opinion that...
... this revised “Starlight Express” is just plain B.O.N.K.E.R.S.
Fortunately, at least mostly in an entertaining way.
It is almost entirely a different show from any previous version here or in Germany. The basic premise, a race to decide the winner between steam and electricity, is still intact - but much of the show takes a very different track.
Control is now a child – rising future star Arabella Stanton at this performance. A bossy delight, marshalling her trainset by torchlight from beneath the duvet after mum has left the bedroom.
In her dreamworld, she runs, scoots and slides down the perilous slopes of the set as she organises races and arbitrates disputes with charming youthful directness. This does mean the show is very much from a child’s viewpoint, less sophisticated for adults, perhaps, but gaining a little more warmth.
Pearl (Kayna Montecillo) is a brand-new carriage, Rusty (Jeevan Braich) a steam locomotive. It’s secret love at first sight, though oddly the sign they take time establishing early on is never used.
Pearl is made welcome by the other girls – Belle (Ashlyn Weekes) and Dinah (Eve Humphrey). Dinah’s relationship with Greaseball (Al Knott) is shaky, Belle is common sense on wheels.
Electra (Tom Pigram) arrives, AC/DC in the now accepted sense, and Pearl’s head is turned.
There is a “Love Island” scramble for carriages to couple with an engine. Steam locomotive Momma (Jade Marvin) does what Rusty cannot, bursting her boiler in the process, and a hydrogen train Hydra (Jaydon Vijn) skates around a lot claiming to be the future of power - before proving it in the last reel.
The monkey did say the show is mad as a commuter platform when the 6.42 has been cancelled again.
In order to achieve this mayhem, do things now which could not be done in the original and excise dodgier material from times past, the show is massively re-written.
Some tunes are recycled – a sabotage sub-plot and number which belonged to much-missed CB is now sung by Slick (Emily Martinez) as “Wide Smile” (picking up on a lyric). A little “Only He” from the original also arrives, but the not-half-as-good “Make Up My Heart” is Pearl’s big number, alas.
“U.N.C.O.U.P.L.E.D” undergoes a gender-change, but Eve Humphrey still gets a deserved laugh on the punchline and Al Knott’s later reply is sincere (if incorrectly spelled, as is traditional).
New number “I Do” lacks impact, and there is a distinct sense of the older songs not always surviving the contortions required to fit into the new show. They simply do not flow as easily as in the original, at least to those familiar with it. Newcomers will probably not notice, but the monkey really did.
In these times when people are cancelled nearly as often as Waterloo departures, many concessions have been made which shave much of the original knock-about humour which gave the show a distinct edge and flavour.
The international trains are now simply colours from a child’s crayon box rather than gently satirical stereotypes. Only the British trains are a running joke, so good luck Andrew Lloyd Webber on your chauffeur’s day off, once rail bosses have seen this.
Inflation and “Health and Safety” have really got at the show too. There’s no bridge for a ‘coup-de-theatre,’ and just one central vertiginous slope used once for a backflip. Nothing like the dizzy heights of the Apollo Victoria, and nothing to replace it – video screens just don’t cut it (and are too small for the front stalls to follow the races on as well).
It is saved from being totally anodyne and veering into inclusivity-lecture rather than education territory by the enthusiasm of the ensemble, director Luke Sheppard’s determination never to allow a wheel to stay in one place and choreographer Ashley Nottingham’s ability to accede to that wish.
Tim Hatley’s set pushes the trains out as far as the folks in the rear grandstand, the skaters zooming off at every opportunity and even playing a few scenes out among the audience on the centre lines. The small train models are also wonderful, no doubt disappearing fast as cast souvenirs if this ever closes.
As costume designer, Gabriella Slade (according to programme notes) took some inspiration from the original outfits, but uses modern materials and techniques to create a perfect unified look, with everybody getting a wire-design backpack. Maybe the inflatables won’t make it past previews, but they are a rather lovely lunatic fringe element all the same.
With notes to Gareth Owen for faultless sound design making every 30 mile an hour word clear, Howard Hudson for some inspired use of lasers, and Andrzej Goulding for a fun scoreboard, the audience has as much to whistle in admiration at as the love-struck rolling stock.
If the races are a little confused, the story somewhat incoherent and often contradictory in its values (coal is a fossil fuel we are supposed to hate, so why is steam the future, where does it come from, or the electricity to create hydrogen, come to that?), and the whole spectacle isn’t quite what a 1984 budget can buy, it is not that important.
This is still a fun introduction to theatre for a new, much younger generation. Very, very visual, as a one-off spectacle you won’t get elsewhere, most will feel quite chuffed if they can get a ticket.
4 stars.