Lloyd Webber
Aspects of Love
Phantom of the Opera
Starlight Express
Cats
Les Miserables
Miss Saigon
Metropolis
The Baker's Wife
Time
Stars of the Stage

The Best Showbiz
Shop On-line

Starlight Express, Apollo Victoria

I left yawning, but other musicals have had me nodding off in the first hour. Not Starlight Express. This show commands your attention from the moment the opening bass thump sits you bolt upright in your seat and Greaseball and gang roll out, their headlamps glowing eerily though the dry ice. This high-tech, pulsating show puts the snap, crackle and pop back into a mis-mash of soggy musicals that have you reaching for the Murray Mints by the second song. With a magical brew of speed, high volume and daredevil skating even an audience half full of bristly teenagers fell under the spell. Not a sweet wrapper crinkled or a bottom shuffled. Before the lights go up, the dingy grey labyrinth set is reminiscent of a ghost train, but the show transforms it into an action packed playground. Tracks weave their way through the stalls at ear level, the audience hypnotically twist their necks to keep pace with the human trains that whip on and off the gyratory hydraulic bridge on their speedy ball bearings with split second timing. Trainspotting at its most electrifying.

Kim Leeson and Kofi Missah get on the right tracks in Starlight Express

Penny Lewis