R&H (Rodgers and Hammerstein), which handles live rights for all of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musicals, announced that both rarely-seen titles are currently available for live performance.
As first reported by Playbill.com, the first U.S. regional staging of Starlight Express will skate into the Tuacahn Amphitheatre this summer. The 1984 musical fantasy, which famously utilized actors on rollerskates to portray trains, became London's longest-running musical at the time. It has music by Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Richard Stilgoe.
Starlight Express premiered on Broadway in 1987, where it ran for 761 performances at the Gershwin Theatre. Among the actors in the original Broadway production were Jane Krakowski and Andrea McArdle. It later toured the U.S., played a sit-down Las Vegas engagement, and was also adapted for a U.S. ice arena tour.
The original West End and Broadway productions boasted an expansive set, which propelled actors throughout the audience on a series of ramps and tracks. R&H will license the 1993 revised version of the musical that includes such songs as "A Lotta Locomotion," "AC/DC," "Make Up My Heart," "U.N.C.O.U.P.L.E.D," "I Am the Starlight," "Next Time You Fall In Love" "Light at the end of the Tunnel" and the title song.
R&H is also making available The Boys in the Photograph, the Lloyd Webber-Ben Elton musical about a team of teenage soccer players set against the violence in Northern Ireland in 1972. It first premiered in London under the title The Beautiful Game in 2000, where it ran for 11 months. The property was later revised for a 2009 Canadian production that offered audiences a more hopeful ending. Elton staged the Canadian premiere. A cast album preserves the original London staging of The Beautiful Game.
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