‘Nobody realised how serious it was’: the tragic story of Starlight Express’s original star

• Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1984 train musical Starlight Express has come steaming back into London and, says the Telegraph’s Chief Theatre Critic Dominic Cavendish, “is out of this world”. The show’s creators are equally delighted, but there is a bittersweet element to seeing new performers inhabit these familiar roles, notes lyricist Richard Stilgoe, since one of Starlight’s talented original cast, the glamorous actress Stephanie Lawrence, left us far too soon while on track for stardom.