‘Steffi Graf went to see it 12 times!’ How we made rollerskating sensation Starlight Express

‘After people pretending to be cats, people pretending to be trains wasn’t such a leap’ … Starlight Express. Photograph: Donald Cooper/Alamy

Richard Stilgoe, lyricist

Andrew Lloyd Webber said to me: “I have this story.” It was going to be an animated film based on Thomas the Tank Engine, but animation back in the early 1980s was really expensive, so that never happened. Then we started working on something called Rocky Mountain Railroad. That was going to be a train race across America to see who would have the honour of taking Prince Charles and Diana on a royal tour. There’s history for you. Andrew had a train set in his attic. I’d had one as a boy. It didn’t seem to be a daft idea. The previous show we’d done was people pretending to be cats, so people pretending to be trains wasn’t such a leap.

Writing Starlight Express was an education. Up till then, I’d always written my own music. I had to learn quickly to fit words to somebody else’s tunes. By myself, I could write a verse one and a verse three I was happy with and then shove any old nonsense in the middle. But with Andrew, it all had to be good.

Opening night was pretty inaudible – but the critics still managed to be rude about the lyrics

There was a wonderful day in 1983 when Andrew, our director Trevor Nunn, our designer John Napier and I stood in the ruins of Battersea power station, seriously discussing whether Andrew should buy the building to put Starlight Express on in it. It was one of the many days when I have felt I am definitely out of my league here. I had impostor syndrome to an amazing extent.

Opening night was exciting, very glitzy. The BBC decided it was worth having an outside broadcast van parked right by the Apollo Victoria. The business of radio mics was quite new and they arrived, switched on and immediately our own radio mics went dead because all the frequencies were being used by the BBC. So the show was pretty inaudible for most of the time. The critics still managed to be fairly rude about the lyrics, though.

Before Cats, Phantom and Les Mis, if a show ran for two years it was a triumph. The German production of Starlight has had a standing ovation every night for 36 years. Steffi Graf went to see it 12 times – she’d go before a big competition to gee herself up, to see a show about the little guy winning. The German football team used to go and watch Starlight Express before an international.

We’ve done a lot of rewriting for the new production in Wembley, partly because the way we treated women in the original show was appalling. All these ditzy little “train coaches” in their miniskirts being bossed around by male “engines”. Now all the women are stronger. It’s much better.

Arlene Phillips, choreographer

In late 1979, I was staying at Andrew Lloyd Webber’s home at Sydmonton in Hampshire. We were sitting at breakfast and I was talking about the film I’d just made, Can’t Stop the Music. The producer, Allan Carr, had decided he wanted a rollerskating number, so I’d learned to skate in LA. A few years later, Andrew called me: “Do you still know how to skate?” He told me he had this idea for a musical that was going to be on rollerskates and would I choreograph it?

How would we turn people into trains? At first, there were talks about wheelchairs, cycles, every form of wheels, but rollerskates it was. At auditions, we found some phenomenal skaters who could jump over 10 dustbins lined up on the stage. Problem was, none of them knew how to sing or dance. And then we had musical theatre people – Ray Shell, Tracey Ullman, Frances Ruffelle – who were willing to put skates on but not particularly happy about it. We began by doing a skating bootcamp, but it was taking so much time that in the end it was just: “Get your skates on and roll.” I made the decision that whatever they could do on their feet, they could do on skates.

Oh gosh, there were falls. The most dangerous part of the show was the tricks and the stunts, but they caused far fewer injuries than people just standing there and not concentrating and then going down. Falls would come from nowhere – a gesture would suddenly throw you off your skates. I don’t know the percentage of accidents, but I think over time there have been two or three people who didn’t come back after an injury. There were moments that made you question: “Oh my goodness, is this too dangerous?”

Opening night was chaos but the audience went wild – people were skating so close to them they could feel the air move. In every race, the audience would be cheering for their favourite. The show’s been to Broadway, Vegas, Japan. We’ve created the best rollerskaters in the world. It’s not just stunt skating, it’s not just roller derby – it’s artistic. It’s exactly as I first dreamed it: anything you can do on your feet, you can do on your skates.

• Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Starlight Express is at Troubadour Wembley Park theatre, London, until 16 February 2025