Members of the cast race around on roller skates and the audience wears 3D spectacles. The musical, Starlight Express is coming to the North-East. Viv Hardwick previews the show that's certainly not Shakespeare.

FROM a starting point of "insanity on skates" the challenge of putting Andrew Lloyd Webber's engine-racing musical Starlight Express on the rails to the North-East is going full steam ahead.

Just a small matter of raising £2m and selling 75 per cent of tickets for a month-long run if, hopefully, Sunderland Empire Theatre finishes a £4.5m rebuild in time, stands in the way of this rollerskating razzmatazz becoming the biggest show to hit the region.

The children's story of Rusty the ageing steam engine - to be played by talented West End cast member James Gillan - taking on giant locomotives in a race has been exciting the imagination of audiences since 1984. The West End's Apollo Theatre was ripped apart and redesigned by John Napier as a skating race track where the cast swooped around the inside walls of the building with the audience watching on giant video screens.

He dubs Starlight as "owing allegiance to the Ninja Turtles and the Transformers and not Hamlet" with audiences at Sunderland being asked to don 3-D glasses for a film by John's son Julian, who is Britain's most-experienced 3-D film-maker.

The man in charge of Clear Channel, the huge entertainment business which will follow Starlight at Sunderland with Miss Saigon next year, is David Ian. He confesses that, back in 1984, he was part of an unsuccessful bid to be the UK's Eurovision Song Contest entry.

Now, having made his fortune as co-producer of hit stage musical Grease, Ian is planning to bring the railways back to the North-East in pioneering style with stunt skaters, 3-D specs and a trio of new Lloyd Webber songs.

He rates Starlight alongside Cats, Les Miserables, Miss Saigon and Phantom Of The Opera as the mega-musicals which have survived for 15 years or more.

He says: "Fortunately for me and Clear Channel and Andrew Lloyd Webber and everyone else involved in this production, the show has fared somewhat better than my Eurovision aspirations.

"The big, big challenge for us is how you take a show on tour that was brilliantly conceived, staged and designed by director Trevor Nunn, choreographer Arlene Phillips and designer John Napier. The Apollo Theatre was completely, and I mean completely, ripped apart and rebuilt for that 1980s production and this is a show that has very much got to tour around the regional theatres - it opens in Manchester on November 1. We have to be able to get into a theatre on a Sunday morning and open by the Wednesday," he says with a threateningly smile towards to the show's production department team.

"We have the genius of Julian Napier - nepotism does reign triumphant in this production - who, in his own right, is the foremost 3-D director of film and technology in this country. A lot of what was achieved in the theatre in 1984 is actually achieved by 3-D in this production."

Julian Napier, who also worked on a US touring version with 3-D, says about the audience donning 3-D glasses: "It is fantastic to have those moments when things are flying out of the screen and there's an auditorium of people that's ducking, it's a brilliant piece of entertainment."

The man most proud of being associated with Starlight Express is creator Andrew Lloyd Webber, who was inspired by Thomas The Tank Engine-style stories he created for his own family. He feels that the musical will impress fans who've already seen the earlier version and appeal to a first-time audience.

He says: "I very, very excited by this touring version of Starlight Express and I've completely re-scored it and rearranged the show and written three more new songs with David Yazbek, who was responsible for The Full Monty."

Yazbek rates his experience as like working with a rock star who is the most successful broadway composer ever, while Lloyd Webber adds: "Starlight is a wonderful introduction for young people to the theatre. So many children went to see Starlight in London and then suddenly decided that they wanted to go to other musicals."

Arlene Phillips, the show's original choreographer and tour director, who recently opened the show We Will Rock You and put Grease and Saturday Night Fever on the stage, is currently acting as one of the judges on BBC1's Celebrity Come Dancing.

She says: "Starlight Express was a challenge from the start. It takes a lot of work and I'm pleased to say that touring cast members are brave enough to try it. Besides the normal rehearsal period for a show, they have to master skating prior to that. On the occasions when a cast member does fall down, which is absolutely devastating for them, the audience love it because they realise just how difficult their job is."

Phillips originally became involved with Starlight Express thanks to what she calls the "razor-sharp memory" of Lloyd Webber. In 1979 she'd been programming a movie called Can't Stop The Music which she reveals is "voted one of the ten worst films ever made".

Despite being seven months pregnant, she learned to rollerskate to choreograph the film's opening sequence and a year later she told Lloyd Webber about her amusing adventure.

"Two years later he rang me up and said 'that story you told me about rollerskating, do you still skate?' And that led to Starlight Express, which opened doors for me to other musical theatre, but this show is my dearest love."

Designer John Napier still refers to a show on rollerskates as insanity.

He says: "After ripping apart a theatre to put one version on I never thought for a minute someone would ask me to tour it. I remember going to see a show in Las Vegas and they'd nicked every single idea I'd ever thought of and, the worst thing was, they did it really badly. There was one piece of the show that I hadn't originally designed and that was 3-D film, so I nicked that idea from them.

"Starlight Express isn't Chekov, it isn't Shakespeare, it's a piece of mad theatrical entertainment and probably the only show that has to be given another dimension because there's absolutely no possibility of putting race tracks around every theatre where we will travel."

David Ian reels off a few Starlight facts: "It finally closed after 18 years on January 12, 2002, after 7,409 performances and was seen by over seven million people. The third longest running show in the UK ever after Les Miserables and Cats. Around sixteen million have seen the show worldwide, £352m taken on the box office worldwide since it started... and £200,000 taken in Manchester in the last week."

* TICKETS for Starlight Express, which replaces Sunderland Empire Theatre's pantomime this year, went on sale last week.

The run on Wearside lasts from December 8, until January 8, 2005. There will be no performances on Sundays, Christmas Day or Boxing Day. Seats will cost between £10 and £20. Booking Information: 0870 6021130