Andrew Lloyd Webber

Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote the music to Starlight Express.

Quotes[]

"People have said that Starlight Express was a mistake. That's valid," composer Andrew Lloyd Webber told an interviewer in London recently. "Let's say it's my least favourite show."^[1]

" 'Starlight' was supposed to be a little animated cartoon about Cinderella, in which the steam train would be Cinderella and the diesel and the electric were to be the ugly stepsisters and the midnight special was the fairy godmother. We did it as that in the first performances. It got taken -- in hindsight, against my better judgement -- into something that it really was not," Lloyd Webber said, lamenting the way the show grew into a major extravaganza.

"Trevor (Nunn) felt that it had a value in bringing audiences to the theatre who normally don't go to it. And even though 'Starlight' is not and never will be, as it turned out, one of my favourite shows, it's interesting to see how many letters we get saying, 'I went to see the Requiem or I saw "Evita" on tour because my kids so liked "Starlight Express." '

Unmasked[]

Andrew Lloyd Webber published a memoir, "Unmasked", in February 2018, which has proven a useful source of information about the development of the show, and a glimpse into the composer's opinions and thoughts. Review - Fiona Sturges, Guardian.com 28th February 2018

Starlight Express at Sydmonton was a small, warm-hearted entertainment… Everyone thought Starlight Express was well meaning, if schoolboy fun… [but] the festival guest list was becoming a theatre industry shindig, so there was lots of chatter about Starlight’s fate. I guess it was inevitable that after the success of Cats people would see in Starlight something different and rather bigger than I did.' – Chapter 32: The Most Obnoxious Form of ‘Music’ Ever Invented
'Although [in 1983] I was doing my best for Starlight, I never intended it to be anything other than a left-field fun project. Now it was growing like Topsy and I needed an antidote… Come New Year 1984, I decided to have a stab at setting music to that most theatrical of texts, the Latin Requiem Mass. – Chapter 33: Miss Sarah Brightman
If we thought it hard to find performers who could sing, dance and act for Cats, adding roller skates to the mix took casting to uncharted recesses. Consequently Arlene put together a group that would celebrate diversity today let alone in 1983…Most of our cast wouldn’t have known what the inside of a theatre looked like. This converted me to Trevor’s vision. Our show could reach audiences for whom theatre was a no-go zone; not just the Joseph children’s audience but street kids who might relate to Starlight and then graze on more grown-up fodder. I could have fun writing out and out pop for a show that would sit way outside the mainstream theatre box. It was later, when the suits shoehorned it into conventional theatres that Starlight spun off the rails, or at least some of the productions did. – Chapter 33: Miss Sarah Brightman
[John Napier’s] gargantuan train set, [with its] death-defying industrial iron-girdered swing bridge that could swivel through 360 degrees, tilt and rise up and down all at the same time, was a far cry from the Rev Awdry’s Thomas the Tank Engine.’ – Chapter 33: Miss Sarah Brightman

1984 Radio Interview[]

Trevor Dann Interview 1984 - full interview transcript.

Starlight Express - 1984[]

Notes from Souvenir Brochure

Starlight Express began life in 1973. I was asked to compose the music for a series of cartoons for television based on the "Thomas the Tank Engine" stories, which are something of a British equivalent of "The Little Engine That Could." Nothing then came of the project.

Two years later my life was complicated by meeting a soul singer who had the unusual gift of being able to sing three notes at once in the exact pitch of an American steam whistle. Meanwhile I had been approached by another television company about a cartoon version of "Cinderella." Soon it became a Cinderella story about trains. A famous prince was to hold a competition to decide which engine would pull the royal train across the United States of America. Cinderella was to be a steam engine, the ugly sisters were to be a diesel and an electric. The steam engine won the competition with help from the Fairy Godmother... The Midnight Special (The Starlight Express.) The Midnight Train lent the steam engine special equipment on condition it was back by midnight, so the Special could leave on time. In his haste to get back on time the steam engine dropped a piston. The prince went around America to find the engine which the piston fitted, etc., etc.

The project never got off the ground! In the summer of 1982 I took my young son, Nicholas, the the Valley Railroad en route to the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut. I shall never forget his face of pure joy and amazement when the big American steam locomotive arrived.

So at the 1982 Sydmonton Festival Starlight was finally performed with the intention that it might become a concert for schools. Here it was heard by Trevor Nunn. First there was a plan that it should open the new Barbican Centre in London as a concert sung by all the schools in the City of London, but the ever-resourceful Mr. Nunn had other ideas. He felt the story should be more about competition, that for children today it should be more of a pop score and above all that it could be a staged "Event" because trains could happen through roller skates. Frankly some of us had doubts so the first act was "workshopped" in 1983. The London production of Starlight Express opened in March 1984 and is still playing.

1987 Broadway Addendum[]

Notes from Souvenir Brochure

For this present production (Broadway 1987) I worked in conjunction with Phil Ramone in New York on a new recording which has resulted in new arrangements and it turns out that some of the main songs are either completely new or substantially rewritten and we have a completely redesigned train set from John Napier. - Andrew Lloyd Webber

"The New Starlight Express" (London October 1992)[]

Notes from Souvenir Brochure

STARLIGHT EXPRESS started life in 1975 as a sort of Cinderella story which I hoped would be an animated movie. It never got off the ground. Then in 1983 I rewrote it for my children, Imogen and Nicholas, in the version that opened in March 1984 in this theatre. Nine years later we revised Starlight whose new music was dedicated to my son, Alastair. Starlight was always meant to be fun, hopefully an entertaining piece of live theatre for a new audience. Everything in Starlight is played and performed live, though the orchestra is invisible under the stage. We are all proud that Starlight not only became the second- longest running musical in London theatre history in April 1992, but has spawned a new generation of theatre-goers who perhaps never considered going to the theatre before and who may have gone on to other (perhaps more conventional!) things. For example Frances Ruffelle started her career as Dinah then, two years later, she won a Tony Award for her Broadway performance in LES MISERABLES.

That’s what the whole creative team feels STARLIGHT is about. It is meant to be nothing other than fun with a tiny heart of gold beating among all its trappings. It also by its nature has to change. Frankly I suspect that when Alistair is old enough to see it, we will be on the track of Version number three.

Starlight Express (Las Vegas 1993)[]

Notes from Souvenir Brochure

Starlight Express started life in 1975 as a sort of Cinderella story which I hoped would be an animated movie. It never got off the ground. Then in 1983 I rewrote it for my children, Imogen and Nicholas, in the version that opened in March 1984 at the Apollo Victoria Theatre in London.

Nine years later we revised Starlight whose new music is dedicated to my young son Alastair.

Starlight was always meant to be fun; hopefully an entertaining piece of live theatre for a new audience. We are all proud that Starlight not only became the second-longest running musical in London theatre history in April 1992, but also has spawned a new generation of artists and theatre-goers who perhaps never considered going to the theatre before and who have gone on to other (perhaps more conventional!) things.

For example Frances Ruffelle started her career as Dinah then, two years later, she won a Tony Award for her Broadway performance in Les Miserables.

That's what the whole creative team feels Starlight is about. It is meant to be nothing other than fun with a tiny heart of gold beating among all its trappings. It also by its nature had to change. Frankly I suspect that when Alastair is old enough to see it. we will be on track of version number three.