“I’ll never forget Nick [his son’s] face when he saw a steam train coming,” the composer later told The Telegraph. In need of some help, Rusty prays to the Starlight Express, a mythical train possessed with legendary speed. Starlight Express is to musical theatre what Sugababes are to pop: its component parts are constantly being shuffled around. “I thought we can’t be saying that dirty [coal-powered] old steam trains are wonderful,” Lloyd Webber told The Telegraph. As he once put it, Starlight Express is “meant to be nothing other than fun with a tiny heart of gold beating among all its trappings”.
