So what exactly was the deal with Andrew Lloyd Webber, anyway?

I saw this in London when I was a child. Steam power all the way

This play is so popular in Germany that there's a dedicated theater that exists solely to show performances of it. Last year Andrew Lloyd Webber decided the play was too outdated, so he introduced a revised version with new modern changes. This includes a Japanese train character named Manga and a British train named Brexit. It sounds like I'm lying but I'm not.

I heard about this through some recent post where someone said that the rights to Thomas the Tank Engine couldn't be secured, and so this is the end result. My life is better knowing that happened.