Starlight Express gets its skates on again

Hit musical Starlight Express is returning to the British stage.

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s roller-skating spectacular bowed out of the West End in 2002 after an 18-year run.

Now it has been reworked and redesigned for a national tour beginning in November.

It will visit Manchester, Sunderland, Bristol, Oxford, Edinburgh, Southampton and Liverpool. Further dates will be announced later in the year.

The much-loved musical first opened in March 1984 at London’s Apollo Victoria Theatre.

Over the next 18 years it played to more than eight million people and took a staggering £140m (€210m) at the box office.

It was second only to Cats as the world’s longest-running musical.

The curtain finally fell on the production on January 12, 2002, to make way for Lloyd Webber’s new production, Bombay Dreams.

Since then it has continued its success abroad, with sell-out shows in the US, Japan, Australia and Germany.

The production will have new lyrics by David Yazbek, who also composed the score for the musical version of The Full Monty.