Online Entertainment Magazine

January 30, 2004



Theater Review

  

Starlight Express

 

HOLLYWOOD, CA - In attending other touring Broadway shows, audiences may notice that a production may be a modest representation of it’s former Broadway incarnation. Starlight Express, now playing at the historic Pantages Theatre, is far from toned down. 

    

Spectacular lighting, ever-present haze and two story ramps are only the beginning. Loosely based on The Little Engine The Could, the performers are all toy trains, play things of a celestial 9-year-old boy who narrates the competition. 

 

    

The entire cast is on roller skates, and they don’t seem to flinch as they fly across a stage that also spins. Also, each audience member gets their own set of ‘safety goggles’ (3-D glasses) to watch Power Ranger-like short films of the race sequences.

    
Starlight Express opened twenty years ago in London and after 18 years and 7,406 performances it closed in January 2002. The musical also had a successful five year run in Las Vegas, a perfect setting for this spectacular show. The music, composed by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber with Lyrics by Richard Stilgoe and David Yazbek plays like a review going from rock to country to rap, even blues. 

            

An exceptionally talented cast round out the evening with Franklyn Warfield (as Rusty, a steam train), Clarissa Grace (as Pearl, an observation car), Drue Williams (as Greaseball, a diesel locomotive), Dustin Dubreuil (as Electra, an electric train), Katie O’Toole (as Dinah, a dining car), Kait L. Holbrook (as Ashley, a smoking car) and Dennis LeGree (as Poppa, another steam train and Rusty’s mentor). Direction and breathtaking choreography are credited to Arlene Phillips. - Ruston Harker

 

 

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