The Painful History of Lloyd Webber's Crazy Train Musical 

Considering there are people who based their entire online persona around fan fiction. I'd think it'd be an easy sell -_-

to be fair, love never dies is basically a fanfic of his other show

Me reading this comment at the beginning: haha funny joke 4 minutes later: they weren't kidding

I can believe it, Considering Andrew Lloyd Webber named his company “The Really Useful Group,” and the fact that he was a fan of the books (as am I) It’s bound for someone to decide “I must make Thomas the Tank Engine… The Musical.” The guy made a musical about T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, and it was meant to he a song and dance music video-opera that essentially retold the poems off the book. It was a stroke of Luck that The Rev W. Awdry met Britt Alcroftt who made a scaled up tv show recreating his books. Otherwise this would be Thomas the Tank Engine vs Starlight Express.

And believe it or not....a Cinderella cartoon he was doing music for, he couldn't stop thinking about what train personalities her and the step sisters would have. Amazing! What a time to be alive!

Please no I still have ptsd from the cats movie.

So a shitty version of Thomas

yup

@@firesonic23 I think the new Thomas episodes are 3-d animation already

@@jonathanwarrdddedcxddeecec4787 Nope not anymore, it's switching to 2d

I saw the original cast production in London and the original on Broadway and there was no comparison. Whether you bought it or not, the original in London, politically incorrect as it was, was a truly spiritual experience, with top of the line vocals. Overly pro-religion, anti-drug, anti-smoking and possibly anti- gay messaging was replaced with just sort of nothingness on Broadway.Nothing. The original was overly long, and has been revamped many times. I think it's biggest success was in Germany, where audiences fell in love with whatever their version was

@@peterkiviat9969Cool story but completely unrelated to the comment you replied to 😂

@@peterkiviat9969 I heard the las vegas version was well received.

@@littlesongbird1 so did I., though I believe it was, like many B'way musicals in Vegas, seriously shortened and tightened up .

What were the anti-gay parts?

Sorry, but its not a thomas fanfic, its a somewhat reconstructed leftover from 3 abandoned projects.

@@Arturobrito0502 one of which was an animated adaptation of Thomas the Tank Engine, so...

Oh my god youre right

My God…did Thomas and the Magic Railroad cost less to make?!

MsDaphne13 Very true!

@@WaitintheWings I also meant to say, great video. I enjoy your work and the amount of research you put into it :)

The Broadway production only lasted 18 months, which by Starlight Express standards, is a flop.

The thing about Starlight is that in terms of success, it failed to bring in the critical success on Broadway that other works of Webber’s creation would manage to do. I might be wrong, but on WitW’s video for Beetlejuice, he makes the comment of Broadway playing it safe when it comes to certain shows because theater usually drew older crowds. Starlight appeals to both kids and adults, but where the West End was able to pull off just under two decades of success and draw families in despite critical kickback, Broadway’s production was apparently doomed from the start; technical issues were especially bad with the set and track’s bridge (something that broke down multiple times, especially before closing) being made far more different than the London set. It didn’t help that Starlight never got to test the waters in its original form. London managed both excitement and intimacy while having characters with depth, but intimacy and depth got toned down for excitement for American audiences. Cats in aerobic wear was one thing, but trains on skates was something else. Starlight on Broadway was essentially viewed as a spectacle, not as a musical, and it suffered for it.

@@CallMeRedon "Viewed as a spectacle not a musical" - I think you're absolutely right. I can (and frequently do) go on at unnecessary length about why I think the original London plot is so interesting and subversive, while later revisions have sometimes forgotten to consider things like character and plot!

It kind of makes watching the show worthwhile; because the cast put their bodies on the line for our entertainment.

The blood stained socks from bursting blisters really made me cringe. That must’ve really hurt

Totally unrelated, but I love your hair!

*its own 😅

​@@jonathanwarrdddedcxddeecec4787sowas ist normal in einem solchen Business😅

So this is why Pablo Escobar became so wealthy...

He's oddly determined, even with his most recent Cinderella

He makes bad musicals and masterpieces. That’s why I have so much respect for him as an artist. He just creates and sometimes he finds gold.

this musical was seriously f-ed up.

​@@charlottesoliven9239 To be fair, a lot of what he does is taking stories that already exist and kinda plagarizing music lol

The actors were dancers😶

@@Charlotte-ci4is You’ve never seen the feet of ballet dancers after a day in pointe shoes.

Some of the cats dancers got sore feet too I have a friend who was in the touring production of cats and she got painful feet

@@anneshields2010 "Sore" is in no way the same as "bleeding feet from blisters".

My ballet teacher used to make us walk on pointe in a circle for ages and ages. I had a couple of pairs of shoes that had bloodstains around the box.

PRICELESS! LMAO!

*One of*, not *the*.

🤣

😂😂😂😂

Just wanted the Spiderman turn of the dark video earlier today and thought the same thing lol

Don't jinx it.

Wow. That is so great. Bet you have a lot of great stories! Happy New year. Never saw it but would love to!

Brave brave man

I saw this show in Hartford CT about 15 years ago, and I really want to see it again!!! I can't find it anywhere.

And we act as if there aren't acrobatics shows that aren't orders of magnitude more dangerous than starlight express -_-

Quoi?

@@nicholastosoni707 (Simpsons meme)

I literally jumped out of my chair and was like “DAMN!”

The sheer savagery is breathtaking.

Spencer Valdez Lol you got me there

28:00 Is there nothing actors won’t do for a Tony?

It looked neat in the commercials! I thought it was about roller skaters when I was a kid.

RIGHT!!!

2manynegativewaves I think the shows are different everywhere. There’s a big difference between the broadway production, west end and the one in Germany. The story in Germany seems to have more heart than the broadway production but it also has different songs. They are changing the show every year a little bit with new songs, cause the son of Webber is working there as a composer, they are changing the costumes, they modify the stage with rotating seats, they got ramps for the stuntmen with inline skates, they got drones, the got something like a modern chandelier with toy trains that are for control before the show starts. But there’s also enough place for the characters rusty, pearl, Diner, red cabost, papa/Mama to develop their characters. This version is changing constantly and that’s making it’s success, which sows the weakness of the ground material, but in Bochum it’s forming it to a strength. They funny thing is, the cast is international but sometimes with heavy accents, cause Andrew Lloyd Webber himself is picking the cast members xd so up this day u got plenty of children that are singing starlight express songs without real german words, like me when I was a child haha 😂

Casual Cyberguy Why did I never think of this comparison!?

And with more cocaine consumption.

Hell, Bowie has a song somewhat related to trains (and the Jewish Kabbalah): “Station to Station”.

I would watch it lol

Steven Spielberg was going to make an animated film version of Starlight..and also one for"🐱"Cat's"too

@@michaelhollander5411 I think Cats would have worked better animated IMO.

Cats at least wouldn’t have been traumatising in animation

@@mrcritical6751 Depends on who animated it? :D

16:08 even has clips from the show and I was still shocked when I Google him

He was also the Pharoah in Joseph! You can see him for a moment at 33:37.

I can't believe there's a freaking Starlight express reference in Suite Life on Deck

And he was Freddy Fredrickson in "That Thing You Do" singing "Mr Downtown" :)

I literally came to the comments looking for someone else talking about it after the clip from the show came up, I am Shooketh 😲😂

there was a tumblr post a few years ago that stuck with me about how that comparison falls short: Cats has too little plot. Starlight Express has too much. Also one important difference is that Grizabella is old while Rusty is young, making it easier for children - the original intended audience - to identify with him. Interestingly the og London production did have a character that was essentially a Grizabella replacement called Belle the Sleeping Car (geddit?). It did make sense to cut her, not only because of the Cats comparisons, but on the other hand it's kind of a shame to lose her solo which was among the few sombre moments in the show. Her name (but not her character or costume) was eventually recycled for the replacement for Ashley once the smoking car was dropped for no longer being relevant nor seen as appropriate children's entertainment.

right down to both shows having a character named electra. LOL.

There's a man over there with a look of surprise As much as to say "Well now, how about that?" Do I actually see with my own very eyes... A man who's not heard of the Starlight Express?

When you do a backflip, do you land on your skates?

Do you wear a helmet that restricts your vision?

When you speed down a ramp, can you pump on the breaks?

Are your socks soaked with blood when you pull off your skates?

Drawn By Dragonfly you and me both!

There's a a few boots of it up on here that are pretty good copies if you look around a bit. :-)

Honestly, I don't think that a recording could do justice to the spectacular that is this show, they never do but this one in particular that is really all about the show. I got to see it in that mentioned German theater when I was younger and it was quiet the experience, I don't think a camera could catch that. Especially because the set is so complex, like you have stuff going on on stage but sometimes at the exact same time there were two people racing around on the outter way doing flips right in front of where I sat. I don't remember a lot of it tho.

There's a couple bootlegs out there on youtube that look like they were recorded on old vhs tapes. Imagine a bootleg recorded from someone in a nosebleed seat and its on VHS so its all grainy and gross. You can find a few promotional clips from the german show and I think I have found the occasional close up of a song or two that someone in the audience filmed. Still....would be amazing to have this filmed with a multi-camera set up so you can see close ups of stunts and performers

Drawn By Dragonfly I saw it twice in London...it was incredible. Would love to see it again

See this? I agree with this.

Or you could go the Thomas the Tank Engine musical route XD

@@paleopotato736 Thomas the Tank Engine/Transformers On Ice, anyone?

I was thinking more along the lines of having the robotic humanoids and trains be different entities,with the humanoids being the trains pilots and mechanics, mentally connecting to them through the helmets to pilot them better (think like vr helmets mixed with the pilots in Pacific rim).

@@penguinsrbirds2 SE has already been done on ice...

when I moved to Germany, I was so confused when I learned that Starlight Express was such a big thing here 😂😂

Briana Michelle Meyer The Bochum version is nuts lol it’s a completely different starlight

Wait in the Wings a few of my friends from Germany have told me about the production!

It‘s a true national treasure here and that’s amazing.

I fell in love with it in London in the late 90s. Saw the Bochum show shortly after London closed... and I hated it so much I cried. I've come around to that version a lot more now, especially after what's happened to it in recent years!

Exactly, recently the actress playing K Howard in “SIX” had something going on with a rib and still performed

Back in my day we used to say "even death is just a bad excuse not to go on stage"

"Toughness" or glorified self-harm?

@@theeccentric7263 Fair point. Far too many people in the creative or performing arts refuse medical treatment in order to “keep their creative spark” or “the show must go on”. It’s unhealthy and not something to be encouraged.

Indeed

Definitely agree. Workshopping and revisions gone out of control!

Well, all he intended for it to be was simple musical for kids, after all.

For Broadway this was definitely the case. They changed the lead character of Rusty to be this happy go lucky train, where as in London he was bullied by others at the start and his character was angry and determined and frustrated because he wanted to race and the audience was sympathetic to him and was rooting for him from that point in. On Broadway there was no reason to really get behind Rusty from the start, also cutting Pearl out of the Locomation number didn't make sense either as you had no introduction to who or what she was. There were many musical differences as well as changes to the characters compared to London. The main thing about it was it was never meant to go to Broadway AT ALL. It was supposed to tour Arenas accross the US like it eventually did in Japan and Australia that same year. But the [producer pulled out of doing it it and so to make some much needed money for The Really useful Groups investors , the board voted that STEX should go to Broadway, it was virtually against Andrews wishes though. It never quite worked as it should have done on Broadway as the co-producers interfered and wanted the changes to the show, not necessarily what Andrew wanted to do. He talks about it in more detail in his autobiography; UNMASKED. Definitely worth a read as it's very gossipy and quite funny in parts. He's actually very honest and open , even so far as not shying away from being self critical. I think with the shows set not encompassing the theatre like London and the changes to the score and plot, it didn't work as well there. Though the 1st German version of the show as well as the Japanese/Australian Arena tours that opened that year and the following were based on that version musically . And as others have mentioned they were both successful productions. The Arena tour went back again to Japan and Australia in 1990/91 and the German production is still running 34 years later after opening, though it's gone through a lot of changes over the years.

The fact that the synopsis of this show is A LOT like cats kind of says it all

Knowing how dramatic and over-the-top some performing arts teachers are, he probably considered it a badge of honor. “I sacrificed part of my finger for my AAAAAHHHHHRRRRRTTT!”

If one must lose half a digit, at least his way comes with a badass story

Metal

Tina Marie Still crazy that my name can be spoken in the same sentence as defunctland lol

Wait in the Wings I think you’re worthy, you don’t has his production value, but you’ve got the right passion.

It blows me away every time. Kevin is a secret theater nerd.

Same for me!

I still have that stuck in my head

Notchimochi Well...that’ll be stuck in my head all day now.

@@WaitintheWings ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-XBKh9Yz2EQ8.html In case you do want to see what it look like, animator James Farr pulled off an impressive animation.

OMG - thanks to this vid all being filler background sound & focused on the roller stunts, Icompletely forgot that the SE cast also had to SING!! 😳 That's just mind-boggling. When you think of how often mega-star singers lipsync public performances due to the demands of just dancing, let alone skating...!

is that why 'only you' isn't performed in later versions? I remember it from the original cast but I can't find it outside of that.

@@jsainz706 Actually it was performed in the German version up until mid 2002

Ty. I didn't know that! @@AntFraRob

Or when she does that skating show when she "got fat" for the season she was pregnant. (Me want food)

You did work backstage in 85/86? I never knew that

@@OptimusPrime298 It was a strange job but I had just left school and took a job taking the whole company up and down in an old spooky Victorian lift backstage but I used to throw lift parties, lot of fun but long hours without a break.Tom Jobe terrified me

Actually, a revival comes to West End which opens on June 30, 2024!

matthew whitcher Literally what I tell all of my friends

Wait in the Wings I will never understand the hate for Love Never Dies

Can’t make all winners, the road to success is paved with failures.

@@dillonohlemiller9027 It's an unnecessary fan fiction that completely throws the original message of Phantom out the window.

We don’t say cursed names in here (Cough cough Love Never Dies cough)

Do you want to kill us?

@@maxrohtbart6201 Did you let my mega-musical about talking musical instruments on Broadway? If you're not the one responsible then you're exempt

Everyone is going to be dead by the end of the "training" segment.

What production was it?

LadyDragonbane Nothing professional, I did Starlight at my high school. We had a budget to do the show justice though. I loved “derailing” and jumping off a ramp to backstage where I presumably died.

You lucky so-and-so! I would have killed to have my high school put on this show. I wanted to be Dinah so bad. Too bad me and wheels on my feet go together like oil and water.

There was a train named Nintendo? Really!?

Jonas Pina STARLIGHT EXPRESS!

@@WaitintheWings the only joke from FG I've laughed at in the last 10 or so years... it's so accurate to SE you can't not.

misterbungle7 ITS WILD ISNT IT??

Have you seen the Bochum set?

this should just be the new reboot of the Thomas the Engine/Sodor Universe. Kids'll love (?) it!!

I admire you so much for being a part of this show. I never got to see but wish I could!!!

There is an cast recording"The Oreginal London Cast Recording for Starlight Express" Also when you hear Papas wonderful Gospel song you will know what the Starlight Express means..

@@michaelhollander5411 If that's true, then why can't I find it online?!

@@otaking3582 I've got a bootleg of the german version if your interested.

@@michaelhollander5411 I have the CD

I worked on the original London one and absolutely hated every change they made. Apart from 'my shoes are too tight' to 'my pants are too tight', and the slipped-in disgusted aside, 'Carriages!' The songs got too anodyne and wimpy and some of them seemed to leave the plot of the show totally.

Same. I've loved trains (Thomas and the real deal) all my life so it was only natural for me to fall into the Starlight fandom

Same, favorite character was Cb the red caboose shy and always smiles in the outside, but on the inside is a maniac that causes train crashes.

any chance of a mashup? 😆

Hey I love your channel!❤

Alex Carson You’re so sweet! I’m honestly always self conscious about not diving directly into the musical, but I makes me feel better knowing you like it! :) Thanks again!

Now I want to know if she still has her skating skills, or never went near another pair of skates for the rest of her life (couldn’t blame her if so).

​@@kimberlyoldschool considering some of her 30 rock sketches where she skates, she still has some skills.

Yep i saw it as a teen and i actually loved it. I had the cast album on tape and wore it out. Not a perfect show, but pretty good score non the less imo. :-)

I love Metropolis!! I had the double cassette tape back in 89 and played it to death! I was so excited to find it on cd, in NY, a year or so later! Still listen to it to this day! Judy Kuhn is wonderful!!

Disagree. Nope. Nope nope nope. The spectacle was so much the show, it just gelled with the musical instruments and the voices. Trains are not light and airy things. The weightiness was needed. The toughness. And everyone wants to see a crash. Had it been cartoony like Snoopy the Musical (shudder) only kids would have liked it. Musicals don't survive on only kids liking them.

Little known fact. WHen Jeff Shankley was leaving and they were auditioning for Greaseball, someone who shall remain nameless, thought the muscles were real and spent weeks in the gym building up fpr the audion. Trevor N was so impressed with his dedication, nameless got a callback.

They did! Both in the original London , New London and the Japan/Australian tours in 87 and 1990/91. Ray Shell who played Rusty in the OLC said he wasn't a very strong skater so he had a double for the race. Same for Lon Satton who played Poppa eventually. John Partridge in the New London version had the same issue as he was a late casting for the show, he couldn't skate properly , but could do enough to do the choreo in the show but not skate the London set(which was in itself very dangerous and tricky compared to Germany where it's very flat compared to the london set) The Japan/Australian arena tour had full on stunt doubles for that production as the races and the tricks and stunts were spectacular and the set for that was HUGE! There was no way that a regular cast member could do what they needed to do in those races and risk major injury that would take them out of the show.. There was something like 68/70 cast members in that version compared to the usual 28-30 in London and Germany(Not counting understudies and swings)

@@ladyjennyanytime5195 Didn'T John Partridge actually get into an accident? Something related to another technical malfunction? Or did I read that incorrectly?

@@skullslace2426 Yes he was involved in an accident that took him out of the show for a short period of time. From I can remember he tore a ligament in his ankle after a piece of hydraulic track failed to go into place during one of the races and he had to be carted off stage in front of the audience. , There was a big hoo-ha in the papers with Andrew Lloyd Webber claiming sabotage by a disgruntled member of staff as there had been a spate of incidents backstage including some sort of flood through a burst pipe, which we've heard since through cast members who were in the show at that time.

@@ladyjennyanytime5195 Thank you for clarifying :)

@@skullslace2426 You're more than welcome luvvy. :-) If you want to know more about STEX or look at pix from the various productions onstage and off I heartily recommend the starlight express WIKI Fan page. Its a font of knowledge or join the starlight Trainwrecks group on Facebook. :-)

I'm the same. My sister brought back the new starlight express record from her school trip to London, and I used to listen to it to fall asleep every night - kinda cute if you think about the premise of the story. (Mind you, my sis is 7 years older than me). She had to translate every song and tell me what the musical was about. Since it's the only version I've ever known, you could say I have my very own starlight express production going on rent-free in my head since 1997. It actually made me kinda fearful to look up how Starlight express was actually supposed to be like :P

Jess Cosslett this was my first west end musical too. Saw it in 1987.

EHH246 I still think we should just do it as a sequel to the live action Cats

😂😂😂

EHH246 please not that would produce some heavy nightmares...

Swan Swan Please yes, it could be the most glorious drug trip ever committed to celluloid.

Wait in the Wings I WANT A DIRECTOR AND FANCAST ON MY DESK BY FRIDAY.