Starlight Express – Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre

Jeevan Braich in Starlight Express at the Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre, London. Picture: Pamela Raith

Starlight Express continues at the Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre, London, currently booking until 1 March 2026.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Starlight Express celebrated its first full year back in London with a gala performance at the Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre.

Unusually for a train service, this one arrived early – previews actually began at the Wembley space on 8 June 2024 – but with booking now open until March 2026, it’s clear that the show still has the ability to entertain and amaze 41 years after it first opened at London’s Apollo Victoria.

Equally worthy of celebration is Starlight’s first ever Olivier Award, and Gabriella Slade’s winning costume design catches the eye from the moment the story’s young narrator, Control (played by an enthusiastic Shayan Ghai), brings his train set to life after a bedtime prologue.

Slade’s signature metallic designs, accented by coloured trim and neon streaks, are perfectly suited to the subject matter and are shown off by Howard Hudson’s dramatic lighting, no more so than when electric locomotive Electra (Tom Pigram) and his minions suddenly sprout huge flash-shaped silver epaulettes during their introduction number, ‘AC/DC’.

Slade also won a Tony for her work on Six, and it’s not just the sparkling colour-coded costumes that nod to one of Starlight’s successors in the pantheon of long-running West End musicals. Andrew Lloyd Webber has repeatedly refreshed his creation to reflect the musical fashions, social customs and technologies of the present day, and the welcome song of the four carriages Pearl, Dinah, Belle and Tassita, ‘I Am Me’ – a contemporary pop paean to female empowerment and one of the standout numbers of Act I – wouldn’t sound out of place being sung by the resident Queens at the Vaudeville. Likewise ‘Hydrogen’, sung by brand new character Hydra (Jaydon Vijn) is a hip-hop tune with an irresistibly catchy hook. You have to admit the 77-year-old composer still knows how to write a tune!

Some of the show’s original songs are also still going strong, including the rocking ‘Pumping Iron’ sung by Greaseball (Al Knott); Tammy Wynette pastiche ‘U.N.C.O.U.P.L.E.D’, hilariously hammed up by Eve Humphrey’s lovelorn dining car Dinah; and the company’s glorious gospel finale ‘Light at the End of the Tunnel’ led by Jade Marvin’s vivacious Momma.

But of course the music is only half the pull of Starlight Express, and the cast’s much vaunted roller-skating is so slick that it’s easy to take their skills for granted, no more so than in the show’s four race sequences. The racetrack itself snakes around the custom-built theatre (dubbed the Starlight Auditorium), with the best seats in the house – sunk into two pits in the middle of the stage – placed at the heart of the action as the engines, trucks and carriages skate around their heads.

As his work on The Little Big Things at @sohoplace demonstrated, director Luke Sheppard welcomes the challenge of building a cast/audience rapport in unorthodox spaces. Audience members in the more orthodox bank of seats further away from the set will feel involved in the action as they can watch the races unfold on two giant screens, and are encouraged to cheer for their favourites by non-racing cast members.

The set, designed by Tim Hatley, incorporates a skate ramp on which race ‘marshals’ Charlie Russell and Dante Hutchinson show off their acrobatic scooter skills, as well as two sweeping ramps leading up to a platform from which Control directs the action.

We were reminded of the potential dangers involved in the production during ActII when the show had to be stopped for 10 minutes to dry up some liquid on the racetrack. Jeevan Braich’s moving rendition of Rusty’s ‘I Am the Starlight’ turned out to be an all-too-literal showstopper before the enforced break, but a patient audience cheered the mop-wielding stage management and were soon engrossed in the unscheduled Act III in which obsolete steam train Rusty finds the inner strength to win the final race and, inevitably, the girl, in the shape of glamorous observation car Pearl (Ashlyn Weekes).

Finally, we get to hear all our favourite songs again as the curtain call is followed by a fashionable five-minute megamix which had the crowd on their feet and the cast covering every inch of the skating track in a high-speed farewell conga.

The plot may be forgivably thin and whether young audiences still relate to a young boy or girl with a passion for trains is questionable in this age of Mario and Minecraft, but as a spectacle and a journey through musical styles old and new, Starlight Express is simply great fun.

Envisaged by Lloyd Webber as a constantly evolving introduction to theatre for youngsters, the show continues to draw in the crowds as it moves with the times and we suspect this may be the first birthday gala of many.

Rhys Lewis