Is it a musical? Is it a roller derby? Is it a game-show? When the roller-skating phenomenon that is “ Starlight Express ” opened in London in 1984 it was all of those and more, as evidenced by its 18-year run. It lasted just 22 months on Broadway but in a uniquely created theater in Bochum, Germany, it has just entered its 37th year. Might North London’s much-vaunted new version in a specifically rebuilt theater emulate that success? Hope springs eternal, but given Luke Sheppard’s surprisingly strained and only intermittently exciting production, it’s going to need a massive marketing spend.
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 (J.
