biggest-gaudiest-patronuses
Andrew Lloyd Webber is such a force of chaos and I love that for him
Losing my mind over this comment. the randomness, the fanciful imagery, the lack of meaningful context. 10/10 great job tumblr
andrew lloyd webber aka the creator of Phantom of the opera and Cats, but more importantly the man responsible for the Sexy Thomas the Tank Engine musical adaption
zerozara1807
The sexy?? Thomas the tank engine?? musical adaptation?? WHAT??
oh yes I am delighted to introduce you to the spectacle on roller skates known as the STARLIGHT EXPRESS!
it’s the 9th longest running theatre show in West End history and, for some reason, the most successful musical in Germany?
the first song Webber wrote (ultimately removed from the final production) was called ENGINE OF LOVE. It was originally written for an American soul singer who could sing three notes simultaneously in the style of a steam whistle.
yeah. absolute banger
saltyvsparrow
I have never seen Starlight Express, but this twitter thread has me curious.
“I have become God; God gets to write a musical where everyone is on roller skates”
gentlemean
Oh wow, I can actually add on to this:
As mentioned earlier, Starlight Express is the most successful musical in Germany. Well, it truly is! When my dad was younger, he listened to the record of the soundtrack that he somehow had (records were hard to get here back then), and absolutely loved the music. So, naturally, when I was about 12 (?) he took our entire family to see the musical.
The only musical we had seen before was “Tarzan” (I mean, we knew the movie already, so understanding the story wasn’t hard), and when we went to see “Starlight Express”, everyone except my dad had absolutely no idea what it was about. Ve vaguely knew it was something weird about trains on rollerskates, but that was about it.
The entire musical basically takes place inside a giant skatepark - there are various ways for the actors to skate around the whole room, between viewers, up some walls, it’s crazy. We had rather cheap places, so we didn’t sit down there, where we could see the actors skating besides us - we sat all the way up there, at the top, above even the light show. This meant, we overlooked everything, but were too far away to actually understand a word.
The music was fantastic, (as the twitter-post mentioned, everyone only remembers that one song, I can confirm this) and the performance was a wild ride - if you have never seen it, the choreography takes place around the entire room, and is supported by an insane lightshow - but, to this day, I did not know the story. I knew the kid played with the trains, dreamed of a race, and there was this god - train… But, honestly, the details? No story, just vibes.
holy shit. germany built an entire indoor racetrack for this
this has been a permanent installation since the 80s i am losing what little remains of my mind
180hugs
Starlight express was my first musical when I was 11. It was wild and my dream was to perform it at some point. Can’t sing tho so never mind
I sat right there:
