TRAIN WRECK `STARLIGHT EXPRESS' NEVER COMES CLOSE TO GETTING ON TRACK.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Critic

SO MANY OF US spend our meager existence in search of that elusive something ... a sure-fire money maker, inner peace, the meaning of life.

Those of us who are still looking can take a certain comfort - or perhaps despair - in the knowledge that billionaire composer Andrew Lloyd Webber discovered his one true thing somewhere back in the early 1980s.

Anybody out there want to know what that one true thing is? Of course you do. Pay attention, 'cause this one's a two-parter. For eternal wisdom, prosperity and inner fulfillment - or, at the very least, huge numbers at the box office - you need ...

1. Elaborately costumed, singing actors on roller skates.

2. The lyric ``Freight is great.''

Put the two together and you also can have a musical that runs 18 years. Is life sweet or what?

Now, having never seen the original production of Lloyd Webber's train musical ``Starlight Express,'' I can only guess at how close the revamped touring version hews to that original gold mine. In the deplorable but certainly Vegas-worthy production that rolls across the Pantages Theatre stage for the next week or so, the performers skate their shapely little fannies off amid plenty of smoke and pyrotechnics. Busloads of schoolchildren were at opening night, and here's hoping they won't flash back to this nonsense whenever the term ``live theater'' is mentioned.

But back to ``Starlight.'' This time around, there are a few new characters, some new lyrics (added by ``Full Monty'' composer David Yazbek) and a couple of filmed racing sequences that require us to put on 3D glasses in order to get all the effects. Rest assured, nobody has updated ``Freight is great.'' (Would we dare to paint a mustache on the Mona Lisa?)

``Starlight Express'' is a revamped ``Little Engine That Could'' scenario. A child goes to bed, dreams his toy trains into roller skating life and places them into competition. Greaseball, the Elvis-like diesel engine (played by Drue Williams), and Electra, the Velvet Underground electric train (Dustin Dubreuil), are the prohibitive favorites, although plucky steam train Rusty (Franklyn Warfield) will give it a whirl, particularly if it means winning back comely observation car Pearl (Clarissa Grace).

That's right, the girl cars couple and uncouple with the male locomotives depending on personality whims. There are noble trains, treacherous trains, fighting trains. When they actually race - in film sequences directed by Julian Napier - we see them careening through an obstacle-course-like warehouse, smashing into each other like something out of ``American Gladiators.''

Lloyd Webber, who apparently developed the musical train notion to entertain his young children, is borrowing from his own songbook. Snatches of ``Evita'' and ``Cats'' trickle into instrumental bridges. John Napier's scenes and costumes, easily the show's most arresting elements, owe a debt to ``Cats'' as well.

For the most part, however, these songs are silly, sillier and silliest: a tour through the composer's attempt at genre experimentation. Here's a hip-hop song number, there's a countrified ballad. My engineer's hat is off to any performer who can sing and trick skate simultaneously - particularly when encumbered by a lot of costumage - but the show's heavy acoustics often drown out Richard Stilgoe's lyrics.

Not to worry, though. Every chorus of ``Freight is great'' comes through with pristine clarity. (Could we tamper with even a note of Beethoven's 9th?)

Through the strobes, banks of descending lights and half-pipe stunts, director/choreographer Arlene Phillips gives a few of her actors moments to shine. Dubreuil's peacock of an electric train earns several laughs while Grace's Pearl brings a sexy perkiness to the love song ``He'll Whistle at Me.''

Not a bad number, that. It's no ``Freight is great,'' but there are only so many Holy Grails to be unearthed.

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

STARLIGHT EXPRESS - One and one half stars

Where: Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday; through Feb. 8.

Tickets: $25 to $60. Call [phone].

In a nutshell: Vegas does it better.

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Photo:

Rusty and the coach cars roll on in Andrew Lloyd Webber's ``Starlight Express'' at the Pantages Theatre.