’Starlight Express’ Review: Wobbly Revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Roller-Skating Musical Never Hits Stride (2024)

Jun 30, 2024 3:30pm PT

Every iteration of the show has subtracted and added numbers to Lloyd Webber’s score. That makes sense since the show was never conceived as seriously thought-through musical drama but more as a succession of songs to create a fun-fest event about trains racing against one another to appeal to theater newcomers. This was event-theater before anyone coined the term.

Building on numerous previous iterations of the show, the major changes of this new production reflect welcome departures from eighties sexual politics. In the original, all the trains were male with females relegated to playing subsidiary coach characters. Here, some genders have been switched. One of the leading contenders for the prize for the fastest train, Greaseball, formerly Elvis Presley-like, is now female and played by Al Knott. Similarly, the character of the central child’s father is now his mother (Jade Marvin.) And in the era of climate awareness, a new character, Hydra (Jaydon Vijn) – as in hydrogen – arrives to help the hero on his way.

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The production’s major change is that while originally the racing trains were commanded into action by an unseen booming voice-over, now, the pre-teen young boy, Control (Christian Buttaci at the performance reviewed) whose dream the show is, now runs things. This makes narrative sense but his high-pitched yelling is more endearing than propulsive. And it couldn’t be more ironic that in a show wholly about rivals fiercely racing to win, the missing elements are momentum and tension. There are individual thrills, but nothing accumulates.

Part of that is because the characters are wafer-thin. The daredevil dedication of the quadruple-threat performers – singing, acting, dancing and skating – is unquestionably admirable but you begin to long for more, well, personality. Tall, arch Electra, the electric train, promises to add very welcome camp into the proceedings but Tim Pigram is stymied because although his unexpectedly pointy inflatable costume (by Gabriella Slade) gets laughs, his dialogue falls short of the queeny promise. Eve Humphrey’s perky dining car Dinah is delightfully precise, but the production’s rush to get to the next race militates against stronger work from pretty much everyone.

Musically, the new songs add little. A blues number for Momma is character-appropriate but, like the score’s weaker moments, sadly generic.

The highpoint is the ultimate singing of the oft-repeated, lovely and hauntingly hopeful title song. Suddenly, everything calms down as Rusty (Jeevan Braich, in his professional debut) sings sweetly into the darkness. Sound designer Gareth Owen gives Laura Bangay’s top-flight band evocative, echoey reverb and the whole design team fly in individual glowing stars against a ceiling filled with shimmering pin-pricks of light. It’s restrained and magical.