Rock and roller: Starlight Express 3-D is coming to town

WHEN THE MUSICAL Starlight Express opened at London's Apollo Victoria Theatre in 1984, the inside of the venue was ripped out. The set makers needed to build a series of massive tracks curving through the seating, to duplicate the excitement of two trains racing each other through the auditorium at top speed. It wasn't a train set, though. The trains were played by dancers, and the dancers were on skates. It was a huge financial risk, as nobody had created a musical on roller skates before. It was expensive and dangerous.

But it paid off: Starlight Express played in London for 18 years and ran for more than 7,000 performances. It went to Broadway, where another theatre was adapted. At Bochum, in Germany, a special theatre was built just for the show, and it's been playing there for 25 years.

Touring, however, was always going to be a problem. Theatres don't like to make such radical changes, and it can't be done quickly. Then set designer Julian Napier had the idea of projecting the races in 3-D, and a new Starlight was born. Hong Kong will see it for the first time this autumn.

It is not just the racers who are on roller skates. All 23 characters are skaters, as well as the five swings, ready to take over at any point in case of injury (and yes, there are injuries). Even the coaches are on skates at rehearsals. The only person without skates is the répétiteur, who plays the piano as the cast practise.

Starlight Express has its genesis in a more sedate series of train stories, the Thomas the Tank Engine children's books, written by the Reverend W. Awdry. Andrew Lloyd Webber (now Lord Lloyd Webber, and composer of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and The Phantom of the Opera) had hoped to do a musical version of the Thomas books, but couldn't get permission. So he invented his own train story, loosely based on Cinderella.