During the Christmas holidays, I went with my uncle, aunt and cousins to see the musical “Starmania” at La Seine Musicale in Paris.

“Starmania” was written in 1976 by Michel Berger and Luc Plamondon. It’s three hours long with a twenty-minute interlude. This musical is known worldwide for its iconic songs like “"When we Come to Town" or "The World is Stone". It’s composed of 19 different songs ranging from pop to rock to Electro.

The plot takes place in Monopolis, the new capital of the West, that is scarified by the Black Stars, a gang led by Johnny Rockfort who acts under the influence of Sadia, an agitated pupil, a girl from high society, who cross-dresses in the evening to go down underground and give orders. They all meet at the Underground Café, under the amused gaze of Marie-Jeanne, the automaton waitress.

Above this underground café rises the Golden Tower, a hundred-story structure at the top of which is the office of Zéro Janvier, a billionaire who has got into politics. He bases his electoral crusade on the return to order and the structure of the new infinitesimal world. He therefore becomes the sworn adversary of Johnny Rockfort and the Black Stars. It's in this environment that three similar love stories play out: the insolvable love of Marie-Jeanne for Ziggy, the youthful unisexual and mythomaniac record dealer; the sensational love of Zéro Janvier for Stella, a sex symbol who has just said farewell to the cinema; the passionate love of Johnny Rockfort and Cristal, the story at the centre of the plot. Cristal, star presenter of a TV show called “STARMANIA”, receives a phone call from Sadia who offers her a covert interview with Johnny Rockfort, whose face noone knows. The rendez-vous takes place at the Underground Café. Cristal and Johnny fall in love with each other, and she runs away with him. Sadia therefore loses her hold on the leader of the Black Stars. Cristal thus decides to become the prophet for the Black Stars by transferring corsair dispatches using a neutron camera which allows him to take over the TV airwaves. The themes covered are terrorism, racism, ecological crisis and are therefore very topical, which is very impressive for a musical that was written nearly 40 years ago.

During the show, I was impressed by the voices of the actors which made us go from one emotion to another in very little time. They sang brilliantly while dancing frantically at the same time! The dances were ingeniously choreographed. The decors were very impressive, like the tower in the last scene that was remarkably tall. They were also very well designed, allowing actors to move very freely around the stage while hiding the actors so they could navigate around the stage with hidden stairs. The lights were also super impressive, they were used at their peak potential, changing between warm and cold colours depending on the mood of the scene. The way the lights moved was also very well good: during sad scenes they moved very slowly and during more energetic ones their movements were frenzied. Smoke was also used at some point but, for me, the best piece of specials effect were the rose petals falling from the roof at one point.

To conclude, this musical is an undeniable masterpiece that will be seen as one of the best cyberpunk-themed artworks of all time because of the vision that the authors had of today’s world, which is shockingly accurate. It’s a true, once-in-a-lifetime experience that everybody should try!

Axel Delevaque