Starlight Express

You don't love trains as much as Andrew Lloyd Webber loves trains

Something Old

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to write about this week, and then I read about seven absolutely bananas facts about Starlight Express in a row, so this is what we’re doing now.

If you haven’t heard of Starlight Express, it’s not too late to turn back. But if you want to stay in this nightmare, here’s the deal: Cats, but with trains.

In the 1970s, Andrew Lloyd Webber started getting really excited about the idea of writing a musical about trains. I can only assume that Lloyd Webber has had access to the best drugs money can buy for a long, long time. His interest in trains apparently started with a desire to adapt Thomas the Tank Engine in a TV show, but that project was shuttered when the powers that be decided the property wasn’t popular enough outside of the UK. Later, Lloyd Webber heard of the singer Earl Jordan, who could sing three notes at once and generate the sound of a train whistle. Jumping at the opportunity for train songs, he composed the novelty song "Engine of Love" for Jordan, but it didn’t chart. Not long after, Lloyd Webber started working on an animated TV show adaptation of Cinderella, which had the Prince—and now I’m quoting from the Wikipedia page—”hold a competition to decide which engine would pull the royal train across the United States of America. Cinderella would be a steam engine and the ugly sisters would be a diesel engine and an electric engine.”

This project never got past the development stage, but Lloyd Webber is premiering an original Cinderella musical on the West End next year—will the train competition make an appearance? We can only hope.

All of those incidents led to Lloyd Webber rolling up his sleeves and saying “well if they’re not going to pay me to write about trains, I’m just going to have to do it myself.”*

*not a real quote

Starlight Express opened in 1984. It was directed by Trevor Nunn, who joined the project after seeing some of the songs and deciding he wanted to turn it from "twee" to something with more "spectacle and theatre magic".

We might look at Starlight Express now and say “this was never going to be remotely successful,” but you have to understand that these men just made Cats. Again, that sounds like a bad thing now, but Cats was phenomenally successful in the 1980s. They were rolling in money. They were fresh off of Tony Award wins. The world was their strange, strange oyster, and they were coming to cash in all of their success on a musical about trains.

So what is Starlight Express actually about? Basically, an outdated steam engine competes in a racing championship in hopes of wooing a “first class carriage.” Does this plot sound a bit like Cats? Because it sounds a bit like Cats to me.

Unlike Cats, however, every actor in Starlight Express performs on roller skates. For that alone, this show deserved to make it. Roller skates are in again! Revive Starlight Express!

Alas, the show did not measure up to its feline sibling. It was nominated for a couple Olivier Awards and a slew of Tony Awards, but only took home one Tony for Costume Design. Not even choreography for the roller skates, ouch. It had 700 or so performances on Broadway and promptly exited the consciousness of American theater.

However, it had much greater staying power in the hearts and minds of its home country, the UK. The original production stayed on the West End for a staggering 18 years—if you were born the year that Starlight Express premiered, you could go see it to celebrate your high school graduation. It ran from 1984-1992, was retooled, and then continued running from 1992-2002. British people are deeply odd.

That does bring me to the last really big production note about Starlight Express, though—they haven’t actually finished writing it. Or as Lloyd Webber put it, each production is “re-invented ... rewritten, rearranged, restaged and brought up to date ... rather than just [being] a copy of the original”; it’s supposed to reflect contemporary music so many new productions have entirely new songs added to them. British indie pop darling Lauren Aquilina penned a number for the latest production, which made me do a double take because she’s the artist behind one of my favorite songs. Oh yeah, did I mention that there was a Starlight Express revival in 2018 after notorious control freak Lloyd Webber saw a 2017 performance and thought it was “unrecognisable” after years of revisions? Guess “reinventing” your show constantly leads to, you know, other ideas leaking in. Oh, and a bunch of people were pointing out how sexist it is.

Anyway, Lloyd Webber wrote a bunch of new material and music, along with commissioning songs from other artists like Aquilina. He considers his most recent version the “definitive” version (surprise, surprise). Those changes were then rolled out to the German production.

I cannot believe I’m saying this, but this is where the tale of Starlight Express gets even weirder. The Germans? They love Starlight Express. LOVE IT. It’s the longest running musical in Germany, and it’s been performed in a purpose-built theater in Bochum since 1988. It’s estimated that more than 17 million people have seen these roller skating marvels in that theater.

Even better, they had! A! Reality! Show! I said we needed more musical theater reality shows and my hopes were heard! It was called Musical Showstar 2008 and it was supposed to cast the next two leads, but one of the winners dropped out. However, reality competition winner Kevin Köhler took over the main role of Rusty in August 2008.

Alas, while those Europeans know how to appreciate whimsy, Starlight Express struggles to connect in the US to this day. I’ll end this with the conclusion from a 2003 Chicago Tribune review of the tour: “Time was, Starlight Express seemed an acceptable option for those who couldn't get into Cats, or The Phantom of the Opera. Now what is it? Would someone tell me? What is it?”

Something New

• Bernadette Peters, Gavin Creel, Kelli O’Hara, Javier Muñoz, and many other Broadway stars came together in a pop-up performance of “Sunday” on the TKTS steps. It was organized by NYC Next, which is currently creating secret pop-up events across the city with the goal of revitalizing creativity.

Something Borrowed

Andrew Lloyd Webber is the gift that keeps on giving. In 1992, he teamed up with producer Nigel Wright to make a dance cover of a Tetris Game Boy song under the name Doctor Spin. It reached #6 and then they never used this pseudonym again. I cannot find a record of WHY this happened, and I can only dream that one day I will.

Something Blue

Natalie Walker is one of my favorite Twitter follows. She’s an amazing performer and has made a lot of comedy videos in the past, but right now I have to recommend her for the particular brand of absurdist, chaotic humor she’s embraced on Twitter and Instagram. As part of this she is replying to every single one of her own tweets with “who cares” and it’s becoming like art to me.

Epilogue

Thanks so much for reading! If you enjoyed today’s issue, please share it with some friends who you think might enjoy it as well.