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After the success of ''[[Cats]]'' in 1981, [[Andrew Lloyd Webber]] began looking into writing a musical based on the ''[[Thomas the Tank Engine]]'' stories, with his kids in mind, but couldn't get the amount of creative control he wanted. Instead, he pulled up a few older ideas he'd had proposed to him in the 1970s -- among them, a musical version of ''The Little Engine That Could'' and a new version of ''[[Cinderella (novel)|Cinderella]]''. He initially tried to combine them into the story of a little steam engine who's bullied by her electric and diesel stepsisters, but ends up being chosen as the royal train by the Prince after winning a race and losing a piston in the process, which the Prince uses to track her down. This idea, with many ''many'' changes made, ended up evolving into ''Starlight Express'', whose first version premiered in London in 1984.
In the story, a child’s train set magically comes to life and the various engines compete to become the "Fastest engine in the World!" The underdog, Rusty the Steam train, has little chance until he is inspired by the legend of the "Starlight Express" and ultimately defeats his arch-rivals Greaseball and Electra before going on to win the hand of the lovely first class coach, Pearl.<ref>From the [[wikipedia:Starlight Express|Wikipedia article.]]</ref>
The show has gone through several changes over the years. In 1994, the London production got a major overhaul -- adding a lot more emphasis on Pearl, eliminating C.B. and Belle, and having Electra also crash in the end and promise to convert to steam. These changes were ''not'' popular with the fandom at large. The American productions, meanwhile, maintained C.B. at least but made the female characters' costumes extremely [[Stripperiffic]] and still decided to make Electra share in Greaseball and C.B.'s comeuppance in the end, depriving him of an ''epic'' [[Villainous Breakdown]] in the process. The closest production to the original still running is the Bochum, Germany production, which nevertheless features the altered ending for Electra and no Belle, as well as elements from the late London and U.K. tour versions.
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