Starlight Express is an evening of mindless camp fun. And therein lies the problem. The opening of the first London revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Richard Stilgoe’s musical comes forty years after the show’s premiere at the Apollo Victoria Theatre, and must be a bittersweet occasion for the show’s composer. It was, after all, his son Nick, who, at the age of five, inspired him to write the show in the first place. Sadly, Nick wouldn’t live to see this first revival, having passed away from cancer in March of last year.

But one thing’s for sure, the influence of that five year old boy permeates the show, both in its original forms, and each form it has taken since. Intended as a piece of children’s entertainment, it inadvertently (thanks to the original production masterfully directed, choreographed and designed by Trevor Nunn, Arlene Phillips and John Napier, respectively) became a spectacular theatrical hit the ninth longest running show in West End history, and the poster child for the so-called 1980’s “mega musicals”.

The problem with Luke Sheppard’s all-new production is that, through a basic misunderstanding of what makes the piece successful, most of that childhood magic and wonder has been removed.

For reasons known only to the creative team, it has been thought necessary that this production needs to update the core content of the show – presumably to make it more palatable to a contemporary audience. To be clear, this show is no stranger to updates. It has been approached from a variety of angles as the years have gone by; songs and characters added and removed, making Starlight Express a new experience for each generation. It’s just that this production makes that experience so far removed from what was originally intended, it loses its effectiveness.

Of course the reasons for these changes are known only by those involved in the production, but the cynical viewer would be forgiven for surmising that they were influenced by a contemporary fear of causing offence.

On a surface level, some audience members may view Starlight Express as problematic due to its perpetuation of negative male/female stereotypes. This may have been the view of the 2024 production team who have attempted to redress this balance by playing fast and loose with the gender identity of the characters. The problem is, the stereotypical gender conventions portrayed in the original text served to further the character relationships and journey. Yes, it’s true that all of the engines were male presenting and all of the coaches female, but that seemed to be entirely the point. The masculine pride of the engines was their downfall. We realised that they were not infallible, but that they were just as much susceptible to failure as anybody, exactly because of their bravado. Moreover, it was their relationships with the coaches which prompted this journey. The coaches were responsible for providing the (very much female) strength and stay needed in order to shine a light on the problematic ways of the men. Add into this mix the arrival of Electra in Act I, and gender norms were being questioned in a way perhaps not immediately obvious to 1980’s audiences, but they were there. The presence of the electric train threw the competition into chaos, and had engines, coaches and freight alike questioning the traditional values of their world and embracing the new possibilities of an electric engine who appeared to be neither male nor female. As Electra sings in their introductory number: “AC/DC, it’s okay by me. I can switch and change my frequency.” seemingly placing a queer character front and centre.

In 2024, many of the characters appear all over the spectrum of sexuality and gender. On a surface level, this is fantastic to see, especially witnessing the representation these young performers are responsible for. But when applied to the text, it often muddies the waters and renders the function of characters like Electra less effective. If genderqueer characters are the norm in this world, why should the very presence of Electra throw it into chaos? Sadly this means that following AC/DC, Electra becomes a supporting player of little consequence.

This lack of consequence plays out across the character line-up. The others have become so beige – in this attempt to be more inclusive, they’ve simply been made less effective. Greaseball is the biggest example of this. Greaseball is referred to using she/her pronouns, which would be welcome with many other characters in many other musicals. But the very presence of Greaseball is as a figurehead – an archetype of toxic masculinity, of American jingoism, and of misogyny. And he even goes on a journey of discovery, realising the error of his ways in “One Rock & Roll Too Many”, and communicating as much to Dinah in a reprise of “U.N.C.O.U.P.L.E.D.” To flip the gender of the character removes all of this nuance, and just makes Greaseball another engine.

If these changes affect the success of the piece on paper, they also affect the success of the piece aurally. Changing genders of characters, or of the actors playing them, has to be accommodated within on the score of a musical. Much of this can be achieved with changing keys (to facilitate Poppa’s change to Momma for example), but this isn’t always possible when the vocal writing is embedded in other parts of the score – like when characters are called upon to sing in close harmony. Much of the vocal writing of the coaches, for example, is written in such a way, but due to the presence of two soprano range voices and one tenor range voice, there now exists one voice in a lower octave than the other two, destroying the effect produced by this writing.

Another way the creative team seem to have attempted to avoid controversy is by approaching the trains themselves in a new way. As the train set came to life in the original production, we were introduced to champion engines from around the world – the Italian engine, the German engine, the Russian engine etc. These characters would be accompanied by a brief moment of musical pastiche to identify them during the “Entry of the National Engines.” This was then followed by the entry of “Greaseball”, the reigning champion “from the U S of A.” Greaseball’s arrival was, of course, represented musically by heavy electric guitars as Control announces him as “the greatest diesel locomotive in history.” All of this serves to establish the competition and stakes in very basic but identifiable terms. In the new production, however, all but Rusty, Greaseball and Electra have been renamed. So the national trains now become a generic lineup named “Blue Lightning”, “Green Arrow”, “Golden Eagle”, “Silver Bullet” and “Orange Flash”. These engines have no distinctive features or personalities, not appearing to add to dramatic proceedings in any way.

There is much to enjoy in this new revival of Starlight Express. The young cast (most of them fresh out of drama school) work incredibly hard, and there are standout performances from Jeevan Braich as Rusty, Al Knott as Greaseball, Tom Pigram as Electra, Eve Humphrey as Dinah, and Jaydon Vijn as Hydra. The production is a visual spectacular, though largely thanks to Howard Hudson’s lighting design rather than Tim Hatley’s MDF set, and Gareth Owen’s sound design is crystal clear in a difficult space (though, overall, seems rather flat.) The band, under the direction of Laura Bangay play well, though Matthew Brind deserved more instruments to orchestrate for. It’s true that the show’s score is rooted in rock music, but some brass or reeds would have elevated the score to a higher level, and provided some much needed sonic variation.

Audience members new to Starlight Express may well come away from the Troubadour Theatre feeling that they’d experienced an evening of mindless camp fun, but the show is far more than that. Of course it’s not Pinter or Shakespeare. It’s family entertainment. But as any writer of pantomime worth their salt will tell you, simple effective storytelling that appeals to all generations is the most difficult to get right. If Sheppard and his team had trusted that the simple effective storytelling of Starlight Express rather than trying to apologise for it, they might have avoided a mindless camp mess.

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