3-D footage and stunt skating may be helping to sell Starlight Express to North-East ticket-buyers but James Gillian's singing is also on the right track - even if he risks falling flat on his backside. Viv Hardwick reports.

YOUNG James Gillan doesn't care a hoot about being called Rusty. In fact, he's the first choice heroic locomotive as the Scottish performer prepares to bring Starlight Express to Sunderland's Empire Theatre for a massive Christmas run.

Despite the rollerskate-powered show being considered one of the most dangerous musicals to take to the stage, the singer/dancer/actor admits the pull of Andrew Lloyd Webber's extravaganza was too good to miss.

As Rusty, Gillan plays a weathered steam-driven engine which takes on the superpowered rail contenders in a race conjured up by a small boy's lively imagination.

In fact, Gillan jokes about going from heels to wheels because he was recently seen at Newcastle's Theatre Royal and Darlington's Civic playing cross-dressing Marilyn. When I am forced to admit I missed his performances, he jokes: "What a shame, you missed my legs... and now I've gone from heels to wheels. I had six-and-a-half inch heels, which was fabulous."

Gillan also talks light-heartedly about the enormous insurance cover required for Starlight Express, but reveals that his ambition to sing while roller-skating actually saved his showbiz career.

He says: "I was very homesick at the Arts Educational School in London and I went home to Glasgow, but eventually I returned to give it another go and went to see Starlight Express when I was 17 or 18. I wanted to go back to college because I wanted to learn how to do that show. "I always had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to do Starlight Express so I bought a pair of dodgy skates from the market. I'm very light-footed anyway and I knew how to fall. Some people are the most fantastic dancers, big strapping lads who can do any kind of ballet or anything like that but they cannot perform on skates. It's a balance thing."

He's fallen loads of times on stage, particularly in the beginning and when asked about the dangers he says: "There was one time when I was singing a song with the girls all attached like carriages and the one playing Pearl, the pink one, was walking in the stalls. She came straight off the stage and landed on her feet and managed to get back on again. There's been some quite scary accidents with people flying off head-first.

"Someone told me that the insurance taken out on the show is unbelievable.

"I've never done a show as successful as Starlight Express. There's just that extra exhilaration when you know that at any minute you can fall. It's fabulously exciting and everyone forgets to focus on the music, it's so lovely and has stood up for itself over the last 18 years."

Gillan has actually lost count of the times he's sung the show's title song. "But I did the show for a year in London. You can do the maths because I'm terrible at adding up, that's why I'm a singer."

So what's it like to be referred to as Rusty?

"I wouldn't like to say how many Rusty jokes I come up with in a day, probably something like ten."

He also admits that no one in the show really knows whether the trains come alive like the characters in Toy Story or are being controlled the whole time by the unseen child narrator.

Gillan says: "There's this funny thing about the voice that controls the whole show and there's a really fine line when you ask someone like Arlene Phillips (director/choreographer) about the times when the trains are alone and when the trains are actually being controlled. It's really weird because no one really knows how much of a human element that we are supposed to bring to the characters."

Besides playing Rusty and Marilyn, Gillan's done a season at London's Globe with Mark Rylance, playing a female role in Antony And Cleopatra. Gillan has also starred as Peter Pan in panto at the Royal Festival Hall with Richard Wilson.

He says: "I got to fly in that. Although it's traditionally a female role I think it's changing because a woman doesn't wash with the kids and Pan has to be a bit more anarchic and grumpy and horrible while girls always end up sounding like Bonnie Langford."

Asked about being so close to Glasgow over the festive season he surprises by replying: "I'm not going home for Christmas - my brothers will be back and I can't be bothered with them. Four boys in the house are a nightmare. They'll probably come and see me but be lemon-lipped about it."

* Starlight Express runs from December 9-January 8 at Sunderland's Empire Theatre. Box Office: 0870 602 1130.

Published: 27/09/2004