Was Starlight Express on the right track?

Sarah Crompton, WhatsOnStage
★★★

“Over the years, Lloyd Webber and lyricist Richard Stilgoe have tweaked it to bring it up to date (losing the smoking car, for example). 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.”

“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.”

Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph
★★★★★

“What a trip it is. As the inklings of the show’s moving, oft reprised title song are heard, initially with wistful harmonica, building to anthemic gravitas, it’s as if we enter the boundless imagination of a child’s head. The tracks crisscross the seating and rise up two ramps to a central vertiginous drop. The lighting and video-work (Howard Hudson/ Andrzej Goulding) is one obvious new advance, combining liquid fluidity with laser-beam precision. Beautiful star-systems move from far afield to right over your head in the most spellbinding second-half sequence.

“Still, you can’t beat the old-fashioned thrill of lavishly attired actors (Gabriella Slade crams the retro-futurist clobber with detail) singing as they skate at full-pelt. The choreography (Ashley Nottingham in consultation with Arlene Phillips) is matchingly robust, answering the variety of characters and musical styles (gospel, rap, ballad, country too).”

Arifa Akbar, The Guardian
★★★★

“If it divided audiences back [when it first opened], becoming cult viewing for some, rusty machinery for others, this production will most likely do the same. Several degrees weirder than Cats, tailor-made for the Troubadour’s massive auditorium, it erupts like a Vesuvius of light, sound, projection and dry ice.”

“Repeated races bring physical speed but ironically slow the pace and there is not enough story as a whole. But there is charm, wit (including digs at the railway network with announcements of leaves on the track), and chutzpah.”

Tim Bano, The Independent
★★★★

“Everything about it is maximalist. Tim Hatley’s set has ramps and revolves and sliding doors, costumes by Gabriella Slade turn humans into Transformers/Power Rangers/living cartoon things. They add to the sense of queerness that has always been a massive part of the show, made even more so in this production with the addition of (and yes I’m aware how ridiculous this sounds) gay and non-binary trains.”

Clive Davis, The Times
★★★★

“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’.”

Andrzej Lukoswki, Time Out
★★★

“It’s not a deep show. The songs are performed very loud, a weirdly eclectic but generally pop-orientated grab bag of varying quality, but on the whole more bombastic than memorable. There is pyro. The plot is simultaneously easy to follow and incomprehensible: a boy is playing racing games with his trains, so this is presumably all just his game.”

Fiona Mountford, The i
★★

“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. The songs are a grab-bag of musical styles, with a gospel-inflected closing number, ‘Light at the End of the Tunnel’ and a witty number about heartbreak, ‘U.N.C.O.U.P.L.E.D’ (surely the updating required the insertion of the adjective “consciously”?), by a heartbroken dining car who prefers to spell the word out rather than pronounce it.”