Theatre is a big passion of mine; I love to go whenever I get chance and am especially fond of Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals. There is something about the music in his shows that really knows how to move you, he works along with some of the best in the music industry to help craft lyrics and The Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice partnership on various shows has been hugely successful. One of the best musicals by Andrew Lloyd Webber alongside The Phantom of the Opera of course simply has to be ‘Starlight Express' a beautiful story centred around a young boy playing with his train sets in his bedroom after dark. The trains are acted by real people and everyone in the show wears roller-skates and dances round the stage on them in some of the most wonderfully choreographed scenes you will have ever seen. I missed the London run of this show so was thrilled when I found out that it was coming to a theatre not far from me; The Bristol Hippodrome in the UK. We decided to make a family evening out of it and my husband and I invited our parents, my sister and our 4 year old daughter came along too. We weren't sure if she would enjoy the show or not as she does tend to get restless and bored if she's sitting still long but as soon as the lights went down and the music began she was hooked!

The great thing about this show is its energy and its ability to appeal to both children and adults, when you enter the show you are given special 3D Glasses and told to wait to be told when to put these on. At several points during the show they released a large screen at the back of the stage and for the ‘race' scenes you were treated to some pretty good special effects on the screen. This had all the children completely hooked and it's something my little girl still talks about now. The cast all have to go through weeks and weeks of training to perfect all of the dance routines on their skates and the effort they put in really does show, there was only ONE person who fell over in our showing and he got right back up again and carried on accompanied by rapturous applause from the audience.

If you are a theatre fan and are yet to witness the magic of Starlight Express for yourself then I highly recommend it when it next hits your theatres, also if you have never been to a theatre show before this is the perfect one to get started with, it brings out the true energy and fun factor of the theatre and I promise, after seeing this you wont be able to wait until you are able to take in your next show! All in all a great night out, decent prices for tickets and beautiful songs and routines!