History
During the 1970s, Lloyd Webber planned a musical adaptation of Rev W. Awdry's Railway Series books, featuring Thomas the Tank Engine. However, Awdry refused to give Lloyd Webber permission to use his characters as he felt that Lloyd Webber wanted 'too much freedom' with Thomas, the other engines, and characters. Following this, Lloyd Webber re-conceived the idea as "a Cinderella story" in which Rusty stands for Cinderella; Greaseball and Electra become the stepsisters; and the Starlight Express is the fairy godmother.
The music is mostly in the realm of disco and pop with a few pastiche songs such as the Country and Western styled "U.N.C.O.U.P.L.E.D.", love duet "Only You" and the title song, "Starlight Express". In some ways this musical could be seen as more of a return to the style of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, although the latter was more varied in its use of musical styles and influences.
Starlight has seen many stars in its cast, notably Jane Krakowski, Jeffrey Daniel (of the R&B/disco group Shalamar), Andrea McArdle, Ray Shell, Stephanie Lawrence, Frances Ruffelle, John Partridge, Rachel Wooding, Greg Ellis, Martyn Andrews, Reva Rice, Oliver Thornton, Jo Gibb, James Gillan Danny John Jules, PP Arnold, Lon Satton, Shezwae Powell and Greg Mowry. The show is a spectacle, featuring live stunts by professional skaters and a large racetrack built around the audience.
Read more about this topic: Starlight Express
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every member of the family of the future will be a producer of some kind and in some degree. The only one who will have the right of exemption will be the mother ...”
—Ruth C. D. Havens, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.”
—Aristide Briand (1862–1932)