Starlight Express in Bochum

Agree about Memory - in fact the whole Vienna recording is wonderful, shame it's not complete!

I also have the Hamburg recording which I like mainly as it is complete (does sound a bit thinner than Vienna though); I too noticed lots of lyric changes. Sadly, though I understand some German, it's not enough to speak it. Do you know why the lyrics were changed? Would you say they were improved from Vienna to Hamburg?!

Thanks so much for writing all that Viserys - must have taken ages! Really enjoyable read, love hearing about all this kind of stuff and is fascinating to hear about the driving forces behind the German musical scene.

I love the optimism they had in the 80s/90s that they actually built new theatres for productions like Starlight and Miss Saigon (and was Sunset Boulevard the same?)

So I agree, I used to find Starlight expensive but am gobsmacked how expensive other shows are in Germany. I saw Love Never Dies a couple of times and was extortionate. Twice West End prices; more like Broadway really. Are regular Germans happy to pay these prices? Is it a once a year event?

I also find the swing/understudy structure quite different there as you mention. Completely normal at Starlight to have 50% ish non 1st cast (doesn't bother me at all as they are all so good!). Not sure why this is though. Do they get more booked holiday? It it to do with frequent injuries? Does mean a huge company where 50% of them are swings and must cost a bit. Surprised (but pleased!) this has not been addressed in a cost cutting exercise.

But yes, is annoying if you are booking to see a specific cast member. Basically you can't really do that in Germany. I never saw Gardar at LND!

Yeah I'd love to know! 

What I also find very bizarre is that the leads all understudy the next role up from themselves. So for example I have frequently seen if Pearl was off, then Dinah would play Pearl, Ashley would play Dinah and a swing would play Ashley. Surely it would be simpler for Dinah and Ashley to play themselves and a swing to play Pearl. Similarly Caboose understudies GB/Electra/Rusty and Electra understudies Greaseball. 

Always strikes me as very inefficient as the cast need to learn far more roles that is strictly necessary. Saying that I do love all these Bochum quirks, just wish I understood them more!

Well, you're setting yourself up for another epic ramble here (but I don't mind, I type fast and I love being able to share what I know. One of the few advantages of being old(er) now is that I was already around back then...



One of the most problematic issues in Germany is the state-funded Stadttheater system (which I could write books about) with their repertory theatre, so there were simply no bigger houses available for long-runs and they needed to build new ones. And it was some sort of "gold rush" atmosphere in the 90s – when towns saw what Cats and Phantom were doing for Hamburg and Starlight Express for Bochum in terms of visitors, they all wanted a slice of that business. So those theatres sprung up and often not even proper theatres because there was no time for that. Instead we got tent constructions like the ugly blue bin bag of the Musical Dome here in Cologne, although to be fair, that one had always meant to be temporary only. Another tent is the now grandly named Metronom Theater in Oberhausen, future home of German Bat, and the Hafentheater in Hamburg (Lion King).

As for Sunset Boulevard, that was actually the first and last foray of Really Useful Group into the German market, though they made a bunch of epic mistakes. The success of Starlight Express made producers believe that they could plonk their shows just about anywhere and not necessarily in the middle of a city, but they failed to realize that Starlight Express is a special case in the middle of the very densely populated Ruhrgebiet district, so millions of people are less than 30 mins away by car from that particular motorway exit where the theatre is. Now RUG thought they could do the same and had a theatre built in Niedernhausen near Frankfurt (look it up on Google Maps!). But while this is a very affluent area, it was just too far from the cities, especially if you needed public transport.

The second mistake was the insane price structure. Until then (mid-90s) the "top price" was only ever a few carefully selected rows, i.e. at Starlight Express the first row behind each race track, then some rows "second price" and you could still get decent seats at "third price". Basically top price was what today's "ultra special premium VIP seats" are. But RUG simply copied the London system where "top price" was almost everything in the stalls and the first rows in dress circle, so by comparison Sunset Blvd was much more expensive than the Stella shows.

And while she did get a lot of praise for her portrayal of Norma, I also think that casting American singer Helen Schneider was a big mistake. While she had been in Germany for many years already, she still sang with a strong accent and she wasn't really a household name people would travel to see (I think that for example Angelika Milster had been a much better choice or they could have landed a coup by getting one of the truly greats of yesteryear like Caterina Valente or Milva in).

Sunset Boulevard did manage to run for 992 performances – judging by today's standards that was actually a very good run, but it sold very badly after the first year and after it closed the theatre was never used for another ensuite musical production again and RUG never tried to launch another musical in Germany.

Other new theatres like the Theater am Marientor in Duisburg, where Les Miserables opened in 1995, and the Musical Theater Bremen (Jekyll & Hyde) were abandoned after a few years, too, but have managed to survive as hosts to various tours, concerts and so on. Personally I'm sad that Essen's Colosseum Theatre is no longer used for musicals – it wasn't a new theatre, but built into a beautifully restored old factory and unlike all the new awful cookie cutter theatres had a very nice genuine atmosphere. It's still owned by Stage Entertainment I believe but also used for tours, concerts and the like.

So it's a bit ironic that the ugly tents in Hamburg, Cologne and Oberhausen are still being used as theatres, while the proper musical theatres shut their doors to long-run musicals but as every real estate agent knows, it's all about location, location, location.



Well, the short and simple answer is: No. If you look at seating plans online you will often see that the dress circle isn't even on sale as they don't expect to fill the whole theatre and are happy to just try and fill the stalls. I believe that the Disney musicals are the only moderately successful musicals in Germany now, because people know what they can expect and that it's (probably) worth their money.

"Kinky Boots" will close in September after a run of only nine (badly-sold) months in Hamburg because nobody has a clue what the show is about (and the title, left in English, means nothing to most Germans) and at these prices, nobody is giving something unknown a chance. We also come back to my previous post here of "not getting value for money" – people leave the theatre not exhilarated by having witnessed something fantastic but saying that it was "okay" at most, and you can't do "okay" at such prices.

Another problem is that Germany's musical audience grew up on the "blockbusters" of the 80s, so they basically expect every musical to be a big spectacle with big sets and the more epic belter ballads the better, and "smaller" normal shows just don't stand a chance. And these days you hardly get this kind of show anymore, which is why Stage Entertainment is so reliant on Disney to produce colourful spectacles and Broadway's King of Flops Frank Wildhorn is so cherished here. They are now bringing Cirque du Soleil's "Paramour" in, which flopped on Broadway, but which I assume will do fairly well because it's a bright colourful spectacle which is what German audiences want more than anything else.

And we hardly have any "long-runs" these days anymore anyway, except in Hamburg. Stage Entertainment seems to have recognized that the number of people forking out for their crazy prices is very limited in each town and that nobody drives hundreds of miles anymore just to catch a new musical somewhere else, so half the new shows now start as tours such as Disney's Hunchback that opened in Berlin and moved to Stuttgart after half a year.

There was just such a general shift in attitude somehow – in the 90s musicals were "THE watercooler talk" with people in my school, my parents' offices or in the village going "Oh, we've finally seen Phantom in Hamburg/went to see Starlight Express, it was soooo good!" and you saw so many cars with stickers of the Phantom mask, Cats eyes and the Starlight logo driving around and even people in fan shirts on the streets. But these days musicals are no longer "cool" or getting anyone excited, it's just something you might do when you happen to be on a city trip in Hamburg anyway or just one thing in a mix of evening things to do like concerts, movies, dance shows, etc.



I wish I had a clear answer to that, but the fact is: I don't know. "It's always been thus".

For example when Phantom opened in 1990 it was heavily marketed on Peter Hofmann's name as the Phantom. Hofmann was a very well-known opera tenor at the time, most famous for doing Wagner in Bayreuth and elsewhere (and your classic big blonde Germanic hunk), so I'm sure many people booked mostly to see him. But... without any notification or warning it turned out that he wasn't doing the matinees (and probably missing other performances as well) and when we drove up to Hamburg for a matinee a few months after the opening we didn't see him either. It didn't matter that Hartwig Rudolz (who was also first cast Raoul) was probably the better actor and musical singer and was a terrific Phantom – people had booked to see the famous Wagner tenor Hofmann.

A similar thing happened in Essen when "Joseph" opened there. Leading man Andreas Bieber was a musical performer, but had got himself a part in a big daytime soap in Germany to raise his profile and thus bagged the lead in Joseph. We went two days after opening night – and he was absent. It doesn't matter so much in Starlight Express (or Cats) I think as there isn't such a marked difference between first cast and swings and of course in the end none of the performers are "names" people book for.
The above-mentioned Hartwig Rudolz later played Javert in the German Les Miserables and was so terrific (I can vouch for that, I was a huge fan of the man) that he was invited to reprise the role in London. And I remember him whining in an interview how "awful" it was having to do eight performances a week, that he didn't get around to do anything else, etc. - well yea, it's your day job, mate. It may all stem from the fact that there was absolutely no tradition of "ensuite" shows in Germany where people do eight shows a week and dedicate themselves wholly to one show.

I've heard in more than one interview that they'd be "bored" to just do one role all the time, so there are several performers who have a role in an ensuite musical but also accept other roles in local Stadttheater (repertory) productions to do on the side. The lady who played Rachel in "Bodyguard" in Cologne for example also played Sarah in "Ragtime" somewhere else and the lead vampire in "Tanz der Vampire" also did Dracula somewhere else, missing several whole weekends. And I assume something similar also applies for Starlight Express, where Pearl might also play Dinah or Electra go on as Greaseball – they have more variation in what they do and just don't have to work that hard with more performances off.

Other arguments I've heard are that the understudies and swings get X "guaranteed" performances per week or month so that they won't get "rusty" and get to play the part regularly. I suppose one aspect is the lack of really good performers. If you do an open call audition in London, you'll have 500 people turn up for a part and if a chosen performer would say "nah, I only do six performances a week, I need time for my own cabaret acts on the side", producers would simply offer the part to another one who's willing to commit for eight performances. And people are happy to get into a West End show at all because there's so much competition, they wouldn't have the chance to bargain "I'll only join this show if I also get to understudy leading part XY and get six scheduled performances a month".

It's just an entirely different mindset, I believe – in London (and New York) it's a question of pride to be the first cast and do as many performances as you can unless you are really ill or have a holiday scheduled (or in some very demanding parts get an alternate to shoulder some of the load, but then it's usually very clear when that alternate will be performing), whereas here ensuite musicals with eight shows a week are more seen as repetitive drudge work. The irony of course being that they claim they don't want to be one tiny cog in a well-oiled machine, but by making themselves so interchangeable they just further the image, because with 3-4 people sharing one part and the audience never knowing who's on, it ultimately ceases to matter who's first cast Elphaba or Rusty or Aladdin and everyone is indeed just a cog in the wheel.

Having seen the new version of Starlight Express now, I guess I should write a few lines (and by a few I mean a few thousand of course…).

Let me pre-empt this with a disclaimer: While I've heard some whinging that "this is not the Starlight Express I've loved for so long" from other fans in Germany, I've had this feeling ever since the big overhaul in 2002, when the very first version I loved, cherished and saw many times was replaced with a new one, axing favourite songs like Dein Freund/There's Me and Du allein/Only you. So while I've been dubious considering the many changes (mostly for the worst) in recent years, I've tried to approach this with an open mind.

So let's get the bad stuff out of the way first: The new "Overture" is a disaster. The old one – with the music building steadily to a climax until the "trains" rolled on the bridge and down the upper tracks was just the perfect introduction to the show. Now just before the music reaches its climax, it's rudely killed off by the Control voice, the stage is bathed in too bright light and the introduction of the trains just falls completely flat. The whole first 10-15 minutes felt oddly disjointed with too much dialogue and too few proper songs. I get the idea of a "better" setup for the show where Rusty is the kid's oldest model train and Pearl the latest model train to be introduced to the train set,, but it just doesn't really work for me. We don't need this to get into this fairy tale/dream.

The new song "Ich bin ich" is... questionable. It's not bad, but it feels crammed in to make a politically correct point of the girls not being mere appendages to the male engines and I really don't need that kind of issues rammed down my throat in such a show. However, it's not all bad, because sometimes you aren't aware of how stupid something was until you've seen it changed. After 30 years, Dinah the dining car seems to have suddenly had a personality injection that made me sit up and take notice straightaway. So far she was always the ditzy pouty blonde whose life existed solely around her dear Greaseball and now she comes across as far stronger with way more sass – and I did like that a lot and it was certainly a good step forward from the countless female cliché musical characters whose only point of existence seems to be pining for a man.

There was much whinging in the land when they first announced that Poppa would be replaced by Momma and honestly, this also worked well for me. Reva Rice has oodles of charisma and a great voice (it made me smile to think I had seen her as Pearl in London many years ago) and a mother figure for the ramshackle set of freight trucks really seems fitting. Add Coco the female engine and the female Rocky into the mix and it does all feel more balanced across the board. Was it necessary? I don't know, I can think of many shows far more in desperate need of a rethink when it comes to the portrayal of females, but it doesn't feel wrong either and I'm fine with these changes.

As for the costumes and technical changes: I feel ambivalent about most of them. I didn't need the projections of railway tracks or freight yards but I didn't mind them either. Most of the costume changes were fine too – I liked Electra's new monochromatic design that feels more in line with his components and generally more modern than the earlier red/blue get-up and the females were fine, too. Pearl's new look is a bit –too- bland and sleek for me, more nurse's outfit than first class, but it's still preferable to the awful pink wig she had in the last 10-15 years that was always more My Little Pony than model train. I liked Coco the female engine and the tiny female boxer that was now part of the Rocky gang and the new Killerwatt component. The only one that didn't work at all for me was Caboose – I suppose they went for some sort of teenage wannabe-gangsta style with bandanna and naff hat, but he mostly just looked silly, but then the role was ruined years ago when they took Dein Freund from him.

The first half of the new Starlight Sequence was absolutely brilliant – I thought it would be strange without the green laser that was such an iconic part of the show, but the floating stars were incredibly beautiful – sadly they then ruined it all by transforming Rusty himself into a disco glitter ball. Cringe.

I have nothing bad to say about the new cast – quite incredibly for Starlight Express, I had ALL first casts in the leads (except Caboose, who hardly qualifies as a lead anymore) and not a weak link among them. Blake Patrick Anderson is a totally adorable Rusty, all curly mop of hair and cute dimples, though I wish there had been more vocal power behind his "Starlight Express" which seemed strangely quiet (although I was incredibly happy that the old proper version has been reinstated). I was also very taken by Rose Ouellette's strong Dinah, for me the most improved character, but honestly, everyone was fab.

So overall... I'd say the good outweighs the bad here. It will never be the show again that I grew up with in the 90s anyway, so I don't feel the loss of the recent version strongly and most of the shake-ups feel for the better. They only need to fix the awful overture and generally get the show off to a better start again and I'm good. The new orchestrations definitely make the small band sound fuller than the reduced tinny orchestra in the last years, so that was another pro.

Lastly, I'm reminded of my first return visit to Phantom of the Opera after a long break, where I found myself bored silly, because the stage sets and everything seemed so creaky and outdated 80s style and I knew exactly what each scene was looking like and how it would be acted – and I've never felt the desire to see it again after that. And with so many long-runners clogging up the West End that start to feel like museum pieces, I do think it makes sense to shake up Starlight Express from time to time – just like they'd do if a show closed and was then revived in a new form 10-15 years later.

Wonderful to read your thoughts Viserys! Great that you found the good outweighed the bad. I agree with so much. I am also quite happy with Mama, played with great character by Reva I thought. Likewise the new Electra and Pearl costumes I like. 

But agree, the opening is just not as good - the total goosebumps moment of Rusty pulling the carriages over the bridge I really miss. And all through the show I miss the bridge and a well lit physical set. And the least said about the disco ball chest the better. Other than that part of the sequence is the true heart of the show for me - they need to improve it!

Hoping to book to go again soon now I have had some time to get used to the new version. 

It's very true what you say - updates are needed to keep long running shows fresh. We'll see what the next 10 years bring :-) 

Something special happened at lasts night performance (unfortunately I wasn't part of it):

Manga (previously known as Hashamoto in Germany and Nintendo in the UK) was played in the 2nd act by a female swing (Sian Jones).

Looks like 9 male swings aren't enough.
Stop joking - really hope nobody is hardly injured.

I'm seeing the show on my birthday.  I saw the show in 1988 on broadway and 1993 in London.  I can say I know the show, I don't know it in German. 

Are their resources out there to help the english speaking audience.  I'll enjoy it either way as I did Hunchback in Berlin back in 2000.  But I'm bringing three Americans with me and I would like to be able to offer them help as they are not familiar with the story or music.

Thank you for any help you can provide.