Ford Center for the Performing Arts, Oriental Theatre
Tickets: Ticketmaster
Through July 6
It starts when you open the program. In the program is a pair of 3D glasses. Uh oh. Then, you look at the stage and see rock concert lighting. Uh oh again. Worst of all, however, is when you spend the entire two and one-half hours of Starlight Express thinking about all the things you could be doing if you weren’t watching this show.
Starlight Express, which by my estimation has had too long a life, has had productions on Broadway, London and Las Vegas. It’s hard to understand what has kept people interested in the show. Possibly it is that the music was written by Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose large body of work, while not widely critically acclaimed, is at the very least impressive.
The show begins with the recorded voice of a young boy, who is announcing the beginning of a train race - all the characters in Starlight Express are trains, be they engines, box cars, dining cars or, in one case, a malevolent red caboose. What follows is such a blatant, predictable, dull and falsely energetic show, that the audience even has a hard time getting behind the hero, Rusty (Franklyn Warfield), a dilapidated steam engine.
The world of Starlight Express is a world in which the German, Russian and Japanese trains are evil, the Diesel and Electric trains are insufferably sure of themselves, and all the "female" train cars are just desperate for some hot train to pay attention to them.
But all that is nothing compared to the races. In other productions, the three races were all skated live, which at least adds an element of suspense to the show, but this production, with it’s sparse set, cannot accommodate said races. So what do we do? How do we handle such a dilemma? Well, when it comes time for one of the three pivotal races, a rear projection screen drops down at the front of the stage, and we hear the child’s voice telling us to put on our “safety goggles” (remember the 3D glasses?). We are then treated to three cheesy, predictable 3D movies that pass for these "pivotal" moments in the show. And guess who wins the final race? Don’t think too hard.
The actors work very hard. Many of them are very talented, and their energy is admirable. But it’s the kind of energy that actors put out to make you think they don’t know they're in a stinker. How could they not know? You know it’s bad when, at several points in the show, the cast tries to get the audience to clap along with a song, and all they get in return is a tepid, half-hearted clapping sound.
Shame on Troika Entertainment for putting this out on tour, and for charging a top price of $70 for this show. Maybe they think that audiences don’t know what they’re getting. This one did. I have noticed an alarming trend in standing ovations lately, but that certainly didn’t happen here. That’s a clear indication the audience knows exactly what they just saw.
