Trivia / Starlight Express

• Box Office Bomb: The Broadway production, at least by Andrew Lloyd Webber standards. It ran for only 761 performances, compared to almost ten times as many in the West End.
• Cast the Expert: Partially the reason Reva Rice was cast as Pearl in the Broadway production despite not having an Equity card, something that was required to audition: She was one of the only women who auditioned who could actually roller skate.
• Cut Song: Several, including some that were necessary for the plot.
  • Many songs from the original version—"Engine of Love," "Call Me Rusty," "He Whistled at Me," "Belle the Sleeping Car," "Wide Smile, High Style," "No Comeback," and others—were cut in the 1990s to modernize the show and to add a much greater focus on the character Pearl at the expense of the rest of the cast. Eventually, "He Whistled at Me" was rewritten as "He'll Whistle at Me," with different arrangement and lyrics and a much earlier appearance in the show.
  • "A Lotta Locomotion" was changed almost completely for the 2003-2007 tours, going from a cute, cheeky, Double Entendre-laden "I Am" Song to an overtly sexual Chorus Girls-style number with an arrangement more typical of the Pussycat Dolls. The tour also removed "There's Me" and "Coaches' Rolling Stock" for financial purposes.
  • Even before the '90s revamp, "Engine of Love," the first song ever written for the show, was replaced with "Call Me Rusty" when Starlight Express made its debut, but the Japan/Australia tour and early Bochum productions included the former instead. In 1992, "Call Me Rusty" was cut, leaving Rusty without a genuine establishing song—"Crazy," its replacement, was one of his many attempts to impress Pearl.
  • The 1980s Broadway production deleted "He Whistled at Me" in favor of "Make Up My Heart," making Pearl's first solo an angst-ridden pop ballad rather than a bouncy, erotic disco number.
  • "No Comeback" was cut in the 1980s to shorten the show, but the melody remained as a Leitmotif for Electra and his components.
  • "There's Me" gets cut on a fairly regular basis (it was one of the first tossed in the original rewrites), though many protest as it robs CB of any big numbers.
  • Even the love song close to the end of the show has gone through some metamorphoses: originally it was two songs, "Only He" and "Only You," and they were both technically demanding. From Broadway until around 1992, the two songs were combined into one "Only You". Of course, when the show was being revised in the West End in 1992, Lloyd Webber wrote yet ANOTHER song for this moment, and so "Only You" was replaced entirely with "Next Time You Fall in Love," with lyrics written by one of his longtime collaborators, Don Black. It wasn't until 2003 when they decided to bring "Only He" back. But then in 2012, the team pulled a total 180 and asked Andrew's SON to write a song for this moment, and the result was "I Do," which has now also recently been added to the production in Bochum.
• Divorced Installment: Had the Thomas the Tank Engine musical come to fruition, this show would not exist (or for that matter, neither would the long-running Thomas & Friends television series). Similarly, the hand-drawn original poster◊ provides a glimpse of what the aborted 1970s animated film might have looked like.
• On-Set Injury: As it was performed on roller skates at high speed, the original production was widely known as one of the most dangerous plays on the West End, with the 21 actors averaging three injuries per run each, and one actress later suing the company. Wait in the Wings would later title his retrospective on the musical "The Painful Spectacle of Starlight Express" for this reason.
• Referenced by...:
  • Futurama had an intergalactic delivery train car called the Starlight Express.
    • And on 30 Rock, where Jenna (Jane Krakowski) appeared briefly in a costume◊ that bore a startling resemblance◊ to Dinah's. Also counts as an Actor Allusion, because Krakowski played Dinah as a teenager in 1987◊.
  • Don't forget the infamous (in the fandom anyway) Family Guy reference.
  • Strawberry Shortcake: Berry in the Big City has a popular rollerskating rink as a recurring location. The name? “Starfruit Express”.
• What Could Have Been: Belle was going to be in the Bochum show, but the casting department could not find anyone capable of handling the role. After her role was reduced on Broadway, Bochum decided to carry on without her.
• Written for My Kids: Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote the musical with his two kids in mind.

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