Starlight Express London – Reviews Round-up

"Andrew Lloyd Webber’s blockbuster makes a spellbinding return"

"Luke Sheppard’s bravura makeover of the 1984 rollerskating musical is out of this world"

"The initial visual suggestion is of a planetarium meets a roller-disco – and that’s elaborated in jaw-dropping style once you’re inside the thousand-plus-seat auditorium. Coming at you from all sides and immaculately conceived from every angle, Sheppard’s gleaming production makes it manifest that this description-defying blockbuster – part theme-park ride, part theatrical revolution – has been made-over for the 21st century."

"... the lyrics by Richard Stilgoe can be as bland as an old British Rail sandwich. But there’s much magic and life-affirming meaning"

"You might carp that the venue size doesn’t allow for break-neck speeds, but the ease with which the welter of coaches, trucks, engines and components make their presence felt, coolly gliding past, with much footwork and dare-devil stunts too, has its own continual wow-factor. The energy and bravura of it all are frankly out of this world. See it, cheer it, sorted."

"Explodes with energy and humour"

"Visually stunning revival of the original 1980s concept musical"

"The authors have done sterling work to make this 1980s dinosaur chime with a 21st-century audience without losing any of its power."

"It’s a musical that barely stops moving, yet Sheppard unlocks its drama like a seasoned showman. The story is slight but themes of respect, self-belief and friendship thrive in the middle of this muscular production."

"The Troubadour might not be in the West End, but Sheppard’s production, with assured musical direction from Laura Bangay, has all the style, talent and energy to become a long-term piece of destination theatre."

"Lloyd Webber’s bizarre juggernaut is bigger, camper and more OTT than ever"

"Updated with references to net zero, the 1984 musical is back on track in all its outlandish glory"

"Is Starlight Express the most outlandish musical ever to grace the stage? It certainly seems so as it rumbles back from its bay after four decades in a bigger, camper and more preposterously OTT revival than its 1984 original, though the most confounding question is how this bizarre juggernaut of a show pulls it off in spite of it all."

"There are big stadium optics (lighting by Howard Hudson, video by Andrzej Goulding), thumping bass (sound by Gareth Owen), a hurricane of speed and motion (Ashley Nottingham is choreographer and Arlene Phillips, who was involved in the original, is creative dramaturg) and outre costumes (by Gabriella Slade), with retro-futuristic David Bowie lightning strikes painted across faces."

"An opening scene, of a boy being tucked into his bed, leads us into his dream-world, and the psychedelic train race. None of it quite coheres and the show throws too much of everything in."

"Slowly – too slowly – a love story emerges between Pearl (Kayna Montecillo) and Rusty (Jeevan Braich), which is the closest thing to a locomotive meet-cute. Braich has a truly extraordinary voice, and there is great tender chemistry between Rusty and Pearl, but the power of their story feels frustratingly side-lined."

"“Sublime or ridiculous?” I ask my remaining young companion at the end of opening night. Both, she says. A verdict with which I wholly concur."

"A neon fever dream you’ll watch with your mouth wide open"

"Andrew Lloyd Webber’s singing, roller-skating steam trains are back for a night of absolute maximalism. Yes, it’s more spectacle than sense – but your inner child (and actual children) will be delighted"

"Who knew blunt force trauma could be so enjoyable? Starlight Express is back. And it’s a two and a half hour neon fever dream, where people on roller skates in iridescent costumes pretend to be trains, set in space, or the future, or something. It’s more spectacle than sense, an extraordinary creative onslaught, with songs about steam engines cranked out at max volume, all designed to delight your inner child – which it really does."

"It’s the sort of show you watch with your mouth wide open. It’s full on, it’s fun, and it’s for kids. And did I mention they’re on roller skates?"

"Revamped classic will intoxicate your inner child"

"Andrew Lloyd Webber has injected new life into the music and characters in this droll, breezy show at the Troubadour theatre in Wembley"

"Make sure to take your inner child with you. Viewed in a cold, rational light, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s hugely popular Eighties musical about a pack of rollerskating actors pretending to be trains delivers an extended exercise in daffiness. But as a way of introducing a young audience to musical theatre, the show has a lot going for it. The melodies are bright and breezy, and you can easily spend the entire evening admiring the ingenuity of Richard Stilgoe’s lyrics"

"The director Luke Sheppard moves things along at a gallop. If the storyline isn’t always easy to follow, Jeevan Braich, making his professional debut, brings lots of heart to Rusty, the gallant steam engine who takes on the bigger beasts. Braich possesses a stirring soul voice, too, as does Jade Marvin who, as Momma, leads the intoxicating gospel finale in Light at the End of the Tunnel."

"For all the flashing lights, the Troubadour itself, a fair trek from the centre of London, is also a baldly utilitarian venue. But my advice is to ignore the Ikea vibes, and let the songs transport you."

"A trainwreck? No, this is an ear-blasting scorcher of a revival"

"Stand well back and hold on tight. This eyeball-scorching, ear-blasting revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s train-racing musical-on-roller-skates is an audio-visual blitzkrieg, the like of which I’ve never seen before."

"First staged at London’s Apollo Theatre in 1984, this new outing could also be the most exhausting performance I’ve ever witnessed. And yet, you can’t help but salute the ingenuity that’s gone into Tim Hatley’s velodrome-meets-skate-park staging, in this pre-fab industrial unit a stone’s throw from Wembley Stadium."

"Yes, the plot is such a pile-up of kitsch, cliché and, pastiche that it’s impossible to take seriously. But...who cares?"

"Hugely impressive as it may be, it’s more like a trip to the circus than the theatre – and very much one for the school holidays."

"In a lavish revival, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s roller skating trains opus is still a one-dimensional gimmick – but it’s an incredibly entertaining one"

"It’s loud. It’s dumb. It barely has characters in any meaningful sense. Richard Stilgoe’s lyrics are kind of anti-Sondheim: it’s a show that makes your brain contract with every second that passes. And yet to complain ‘Starlight Express’ isn’t very clever is like complaining tigers aren’t very good at accountancy. It exists as pure spectacle"

"The production is billed as ‘immersive’, and while I’d argue that’s a stretch, the reconfigured auditorium - designed by Tim Hatley - is extremely cool, with the audience divided into little seating areas that the roller skating actors whoosh around at roughly head height."

"... frankly it’s a lot of fun. In truly spectacular costumes from Gabriella Slade, the cast is kind of dressed like Warhammer 40K Space Marines given a Drag Race makeover. Nobody looks even slightly like a train. But it is a tremendous thrill to have these prodigies whistle past you at high velocity. Obviously it’s a silly idea for a show.. But a lot of very skilled things are silly if you think about them too much."

"Not first class, but a technical rollercoaster ride"

"This new version adds a song in praise of hydrogen power – represented by a truck called Hydra, played by Jaydon Vijn and quite the best thing in the show, with a mega-watt smile and a dazzling pirouette. In other respects, however, it feels like a miscalculation. In going bigger, louder and brasher, it has lost much of its charm. In making the skating a procession along safety-railed tracks, it has sacrificed its sense of danger and complicity. Everything feels as if it is straining too hard to pull out of the station and enter the stratosphere."

"That doesn’t mean you can’t see all the love and care lavished upon it. It is a technical triumph."

"The cast work ridiculously hard on their skates to bring the contests to life, and the songs are expertly and enthusiastically delivered, but like everything under Luke Sheppard’s direction, the effect is broad brush rather than specific. The story is not this show’s selling point, but when everything is so insistent, it’s hard to work out what is going on; wit and lightness of touch are in short supply."

"If you’re crazy for the Eighties, Starlight Express has the wow factor"

"This eye-popping Andrew Lloyd Webber roller-skating musical is great fun"

"It’s easy to be cynical about a garish musical about toy trains, especially one performed by a rollerskating cast wearing the sort of costumes that could get them jobs as aliens in whatever series of Star Trek we are on at the moment. Yet although Starlight Express is a right old load of child-friendly cobblers, and has been since Andrew Lloyd Webber and Richard Stilgoe wrote the first version 40 years ago, good heavens, this revival won’t let that derail it. If you don’t surrender to the megabucks spectacle yourself, you probably share DNA with someone who will."

"Sometimes we sighed with pleasure at the sheer extravagance of Luke Sheppard’s handsomely showy production, all purples and blues and glowing stars, like some PG version of an Eighties nightclub."

"Those races are fun to be close to as they rollerskate right by you and largely fudged as pieces of drama. (“What’s actually going on?’ my inner child asked. “Shush and enjoy the ride,” I replied tersely, handing over some Maltesers.)"

"... catchy songs, a crack cast, choreography and design let the trains take the strain of anything so tedious as rational thought."

"Starlight Express is irredeemably naff"

"This new production of the 80s Andrew Lloyd Webber hit is slick but soulless"

"What more could you possibly want? A considerable amount more, as it transpires, starting with a coherent story and characters we can care about, no matter whether they are a “first-class observation car” (nope, me neither) or not."

"Director Luke Sheppard makes a promising stab at grounding the Robocop-on-roller-skates aesthetic as the dream of a young boy, Control (Cristian Buttaci on the night I saw it), who loves to play with his toy engines, but the concept is not sufficiently developed and fizzles out."

"As to who or what the Starlight Express itself may be, this slick but soulless show left me none the wiser."

"Wobbly Revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Roller-Skating Musical Never Hits Stride"

"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."

"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."

"What Sheppard provides is pizzazz. Wearing trackers that synch with the lighting, sound and video, the ever-exhilarated skaters zip winningly from set designer Tim Hatley’s circular central space up ramps, around, amid and through the auditorium. Troublingly though, the auditorium layout is such that it’s tricky to work out who is leading the races."

"On the considerable plus side, the command of the eye-widening tech meshing sound, visuals and movement is dazzling."

"The Gravy Train Rolls On"

"Nostalgia will undoubtedly lure many to a London revival of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. It has more in common with a theme park than with theater, our critic writes."

"This “Starlight Express,” directed by Luke Sheppard and running through Feb. 16, 2025, channels heady nostalgia for the recent past. The set design and sound effects are redolent of ‘90s video games and British TV game shows like “Gladiators”; the glittery, sci-fi costumes are reminiscent of “Power Rangers.” The show is a dazzlingly produced family entertainment with impressive special effects, but its appeal consists almost entirely in sensory overload rather than plot, music or drama."

"A talented cast do their best to breathe life into this somewhat unoriginal tale. Branch plays Rusty with just the right blend of halting self-doubt and plucky determination, and the baddies are rendered with cartoonish bravado. But the real star of the show is Tim Hatley’s spectacular set, with its racing track that snakes out from the stage into the audience seating, so that the performers occasionally zoom right through, complemented by an array of incredibly slick visuals: steam jets, flame effects, laser beams."