Thread by @CozyJamble

Seeing a lot of reviews of Cats that are like, “Cats: Horny Abomination” and “Cats: Weirdest Musical Ever” and I’m here to tell you that you're all COWARDS because the weirdest Andrew Lloyd Webber musical is Starlight Express and it is your goddamn right to know about it! (1/?)

Starlight Express technically happened because Andrew Lloyd Weber wanted to adapt Thomas the Train Engine into a musical, but people kept saying, “No Andrew, that’s weird” and, “No one wants to see trains sing about screwing each other Andrew” (2/?)

But then Cats became an international phenomenon and he thought to himself “I have become God; God gets to write a musical where everyone is on roller skates.” (3/?)

So the “plot” of Starlight Express is that a little boy is racing his toy trains. Then he falls asleep and has a dream where his trains come to life and have to race each. Each train sings a song introducing itself. It’s exactly Cats, but everyone is a Train. (4/?)

Like this guy, Rusty, is a train. Yes, I know he looks exactly like Frankenstein’s monster, but I assure you he’s a train. (5/?)

Rusty wants to win all the races so he can have sex with a carriage car named Pearl. All the male engine trains are horny as hell, and are sabotaging each other so they can pair up with their favorite sexy female coach cars, and win the race. Because its also sexist. (6/?)

Anyhow Rusty prays to the Train God and that’s a song. No, the Train God is not the kid having the dream. The Train God is the Starlight Express, and it may or may not exist, but if it does Rusty would appreciate it letting him win so he can fuck Pearl.

This is literally the only song people know from this musical! (9/?)

Then there are a TON of races, and Rusty is sabotaged, and then everyone argues about the rules, and then Rusty wins the next one, and then the bad guy gets into a wreck, and then all the trains refuse to race anymore and REBEL AGAINST THE CHILD HAVING THE DREAM. The end! (10/?)

Also the play is performed on roller skates, with the actors ACTUALLY RACING, which meant that I mainly knew Starlight Express as the play where actors were carried offstage screaming after being run over by other actors in Starlight Express (11/?)

Seriously, there was a study in the 90’s that stated that Starlight Express was one of the most dangerous plays in the West End, with actors averaging three injuries per run, and one actress later suing the company: independent.co.uk/news/is-there-…

Also Andrew Lloyd Webber has NEVER STOPPED REVISING this specific musical.

It’s his magnum opus.

About agnostic trains that want to fuck. (13/14)

So everyone go see Cats! And then, god willing, in two years we’ll all be back on Twitter talking about how James Corden ran over Taylor Swift with roller skates and now they’re all dead. (14/14)

Normally this is where I’d say something like, “Wow, this blew up, I can’t believe it!” But I CAN. I CAN believe it, because this is the amount of attention Starlight Express DESERVES.

I don’t have a soundcloud, but if I did it‘d be nothing but Starlight Express songs