Andrew Lloyd Webber’s roller-skating insanity is back, and it is, against all reasonable odds, completely magnificent. That it happens to be playing in a repurposed warehouse a brisk wind’s throw from Wembley Stadium is either the show’s one genuine flaw or its most characterful joke.
Luke Sheppard’s immersive production of the 1984 musical drops you inside a child’s dream, in which a toy train set comes to life and its occupants compete in a series of races to crown the fastest engine in the world. The plot, steam train Rusty, derided by flashier diesel and electric rivals, finds faith and love and wins against the odds, is thinner than a Network Rail apology. Richard Stilgoe’s book offers just enough to hang the songs on and not a splinter more. Nobody, absolutely nobody, is here for the dramatic arc. They are here because a cast of forty people on roller skates are about to hurtle around their heads at alarming speeds, and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s score, crossing glam-rock, country, blues and hip-hop, is going to nail every single one of them to the back of their seats.
The songs land without exception, from the chugging, irresistible title number to the barnstorming Act One closer that sends you to the interval in a state of slightly bewildered elation. Olivia Ringrose’s Greaseball, a gender-switched diesel villain dripping with charisma, owns ‘Pumping Iron’ with unrestrained physical commitment. Jade Marvin as Momma McCoy is the production’s emotional spine: her ‘Starlight Express’ is the moment the whole show exhales, a genuine belt delivered with the ease of someone who could do it in her sleep but chooses to do it like her life depends on it. Jaydon Vijn’s Hydra, a new hydrogen-powered character, brings a hip-hop number whose hook is frankly infectious enough to still be lodged in your skull on the journey home.
Tim Hatley’s design has built the Troubadour into something that resembles a cross between a planetarium and a very expensive video game. The racetrack loops through and above the auditorium, meaning trains thunder past your shoulder, brake six inches from your knee, and occasionally appear to materialise from the ceiling. Howard Hudson’s lighting is the production’s secret weapon; during the race sequences, the entire space becomes a strobing, colour-saturated assault course that thrillingly obliterates the boundary between spectator and spectacle. Gabriella Slade’s Olivier-winning costumes are vivid, clever and more detailed than the book they’re serving: each character’s colour palette tells you precisely who they are before they open their mouth.
The updates to the material earn their place. Stilgoe’s new lyric about being the hero of net zero gets a laugh precisely because it shouldn’t work and does. The jokes about leaves on the line land with the tired, affectionate recognition of anyone who has waited forty minutes at Clapham Junction. The show knows exactly what it is, outsized, absurd, gleefully non-intellectual, and leans into it with confidence.
Where the production occasionally loses steam is in the very quality that makes it spectacular. The races are thrilling the first time, very good the second time, and by the fourth they carry a sense of déjà vu. Sheppard keeps the energy cranked to maximum throughout, which paradoxically robs the climactic race of the gear-change it needs. A little more lightness of touch in the staging, a fraction more wit in the transitions, and this would edge from very good to genuinely great.
Still: the audience leaving the Troubadour looks like an audience that has been reminded why they go to the theatre. Children with their mouths open, adults who came expecting nostalgia and absolutely found it. The Wembley location is a genuine trek from most of London, and the building exterior promises nothing. But inside, this show is all light at the end of the tunnel. It closes on 3 May. You should absolutely be on it.
