Sunday, December 30, 2012

Starlight Express Review

Starlight Express
Tour - The Mayflower Theatre, Southampton

Apart from a West End production I will be seeing for the second time, Starlight Express more or less rounds up the musicals I have seen this year. This is a musical I have not had the chance to see so I was looking forward to seeing this.

The musical revolves around a boy playing with his toy trains. When he goes to bed he dreams of the trains coming to life and taking part in a race to become the "fastest engine in the world". Competing are the American diesel engine, and reigning champion, Greaseball (Jamie Capewell), and the new electric engine, Electra (understudy Kris Manuel). A shy, naive steam train called Rusty (Kristopher Harding) dreams of taking part in the races and winning. He hopes to race with the coach he loves, Pearl (Amanda Coutts), yet she has doubts about his ability to win. Electra woos her to be his partner and she chooses him over Rusty.

The story is pretty simple. The brochure says that Starlight Express is basically the tale of The Little Engine That Could. The underdog story is a familiar one but one can not help but be impressed by the charm of it. The songs have their moments. According to the brochure, Andrew Lloyd Webber was influenced by different music genres and indeed there was a variety of different songs, from rap to western. Yet for the most part they are pretty forgettable, except for the title song, Starlight Express. There was something magical about the song, as the characters sang with wonder about this mystical steam engine.

The characters personalities are relatively basic. From the start the musical shows how tough the contenders of the race are during the song Rolling Stock. Jamie Capewell played a macho Greaseball, whilst understudy Kris Manuel was a cool and sassy Electra. Amanda Coutts was quite a ditzy Pearl, and Kristopher Harding was great as the steam engine with a heart of gold, Rusty.

It is clear however that it was the spectacle that made this musical popular in the first place, and the reality is that this can not be replicated on tour. Since all the actors were on skates, the original set stretched right out into the auditorium of the Apollo Victoria, so that they had enough room to pull off stunts and show the scale of the world of Starlight Express. Since that it is no longer possible the production is reduced a simplistic set in order to give the actors as much room as possible. Yet despite the restrictions, Arlene Philips' choreography is the highlight of the production. The 3D video projections were also amazing to watch as the audience watched the races that would not have been possible on such a small stage.

It is a good production with enough spectacle to stay entertained, However most of the songs are forgettable, the characters and story are rather basic, and I feel that I would have got more out of this if I had seen the original production. This is worth a Bargain.

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