Have you ever gotten particularly attached to a certain cast before (excluding the og cast)? Or even just a certain an actor/actress.
Ohh yes! One particular performer is responsible for a WHOLE LOT... I even had the opportunity to thank him!
Story time! So, I first saw Starlight in London early in 1993. I was expecting the 1984 show, and I was a heart-broken small child. No CB, no Belle, Electra was scary, everything was WRONG. I hated it! Loved Starlight, but not that production. A few years later, in 1997, a cousin was visiting and on their last night in town we went to see a show, and Starlight was the most convenient... it wasn't as bad as I remembered but still meh, would rather have had the time to go into the West End and see Cats or something else!
Then, in 1999, my younger sister and her friends wanted to go see Starlight for a birthday. Being the older sister, I was responsible for these young teens, sigh, sure, why not... well, the three of them FELL IN LOVE with Adrian Hansel as Rusty. (personally, it was Electra I was fascinated by...) We HAD to go back. And it happened there was another birthday a few weeks later, so we went back... and went to the stage door, and Adrian was just the sweetest, darling guy! He was so patient and lovely to these hyper kids, so many of that cast were, to be honest, the girls were just crushing on a steam train :P
Then we discovered standing tickets... for £7.50 we could stand at the back, no need to book in advance, just turn up and spend the evening transported to this wonderful crazy world, chat with lovely people, get away from reality for a bit...
And the show wasn't perfect. My favourite characters were cut but you could see where they had been, I could talk to actors who had been in the original version, could imagine how maybe they could change things back? So much potential, so much to imagine and dream about...
But yeah, that sweet, lovely actor inspired all 4 of us into creative arts degrees!
It was pretty sad when Adrian left the show - but at the same time, he was so excited about the new opportunities, and two years in one role was enough, it makes sense. The rest of the cast, each cast change was as much exciting as sad to see people go, because there was so much promotion within the cast - Dustin Dubreuil was a swing who took over as Greaseball, Amy Field was Wrench, became a Swing, then Buffy. And people left Starlight and went into other shows in the West End or on tour, so we went to see those shows!
I ran into Adrian at the 2017 Starlight workshop and got to update him how his fanclub was doing now, and that he'd had such a positive impact on us all. Just being a sweet, kind person has such ripples through life - I only started a website because of him!
