The Liverpool Echo Arena looks like it is in the grip of a military coup, one in which some international playboys and some camp policemen have unaccountably become embroiled. There are toolkit buggies and gigantic tanks, slicked-up sports cars and Beemers all dressed in white, as if they’re wearing giant nappies – but those are just LED coatings, to make them light up like fast-moving car Christmas trees.

This is the rehearsal for Fast & Furious Live, a tyre-shredding extravaganza that has cost £25m to put together. The arena is 50 metres by 25, which would look enormous for any normal purpose. But for driving cars in, the sheer level of accuracy required just to go from one bit to another, let alone chase each other and have near scrapes, is absurd. It’s like asking someone to do open-heart surgery with a baseball bat.

To really love a film is to leave a part of yourself in it, a part that would prefer to live in it for ever. We’ve all got that about something. I never realised enough people would feel that way about the Fast and Furious films to make such a show viable, but that’s because I wasn’t paying attention. It is Universal’s biggest franchise of all time, grossing $5bn (£3.6bn) in total.

Inspiration … Paul Walker and Vin Diesel in Fast Five. Photograph: Snap Stills/Rex

Since the debut of the first film in 2001, in which dadmobile the Honda Civic was elevated to glamour-car status, the franchise has grown into this magic money tree, spawning eight films and even surviving the death of its lead, Paul Walker, in 2013. (He perished in a car crash, and the next film was completed using his brothers as stand-ins, digitally overlaying Walker’s face.)

It all started with an article in Vibe magazine about underground drag-racers in Manhattan, who would take over a mile of road for a minute and race each other to the point of disintegration, at speeds in excess of 160mph. Director Rob Cohen used hundreds of this drag-race fans in the first film, The Fast and the Furious, along with their cars. Later in the franchise, the necessity of a plot brought in heist elements. And now shooting guns and burning rubber has made global superstars of a cast that has included Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez and Gal Gadot, AKA Wonder Woman.

Precision … cars screech around the arena in rehearsal. Photograph: Ollie Millington/Getty Images

The live show’s drivers, whittled down to 11 from 2,000 applicants, have been training for 16 weeks at an RAF base in Lincolnshire. Their precision is extraordinary: it’s one thing being able to judge a stopping distance to a millimetre, but for three drivers to be able to do it alongside one another looks like telepathy. Even they are amazed.

Granted an exclusive set visit, I run into Bruno Poet, a self-effacing, top-of-the-ladder lighting director who I actually worked with as a student, putting on something or other, probably Arturo Ui. He says: “Honestly, I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Neither have I. There’s an oil tanker bigger than a bus just sitting there waiting for something bad to happen. The Lykan, a malevolent-looking sports car at the best of times, moves so fast and makes such an incredible noise, it’s a genuine surprise whenever it doesn’t kill someone. Amid all the pyrotechnics, 3D projections and, of course, cars there is a plane, a train, tanks, Ski-Doos and even a submarine. It’s a bit like being at a young dictator’s birthday party.

Surprise … the submarine surfacing through ice Photograph: Jonathan Jacob Photography

“This is the first theatrical car show that’s ever existed,” says Hannah Johnson, the 26-year-old associate producer, “in the sense that there’s a story and characters. If you’re a petrolhead, you’ll come and see the cars – but the vehicles themselves have personalities. The way Sebastian drives the tank, the way he moves the turrets, he’s really given it a character. Our lead, the bad guy, never speaks. But the cars he drives say it all for him.”

Elysia Wren, who playsspiky and unromantic lead cop Sophia Diaz, describes the story arc of the live show: “We lead the audience through our mission to catch a guy called Tyler Cane, who was in the last film. We use them to help us, keep them on their feet.” The cars, people keep telling me, are the stars. (They’re also fond a saying: “Teamwork makes the dream work.”) It’s the cars that do the actual fighting, it’s the cars that are the good guys and the bad guys. The latter are ominous and aggressive, while Diaz’s blue GTR has a kid of sprauncy, Scrappy-Doo energy, as scenes from the films are projected on to various parts of the arena and merge into real objects.

This is the work of Kate Dawkins, the 3D projection mapper with a godlike ability to conjure wonders out of thin air. So the submarine will start off as a virtual projection and, when it comes to rest, metamorphose into an actual metal one. “We have content that comes from the screen into the physical environment,” says 48-year-old Dawkins. “We jump that void and that’s very new. Not a lot of shows try that because it is very complex. The 3D mapping usually serves as just a kind of backdrop.”

Personality … the cars are the stars of Fast & Furious Live. Photograph: Anna Warrington

Dawkins, a biker who worked on the Olympic ceremonies, can make it look like you’re in Rio one minute and the Arctic the next. “It’s amazing how many times we’ve done the plane landing,” she says, “just to check it looks right.” As this virtual aircraft lands, it transforms into the actual one sitting in the arena, and then real Ski-Doos shoot across the stage as the virtual ice beneath them cracks to reveal a submarine that doesn’t look real at first but actually is (I’m almost certain that’s what I saw).

You don't have to love the films to enjoy the show … but it will help if you enjoy seeing things burst into flames

You don’t have to love the films to enjoy the show, and nor do you need to be a petrolhead. But, I think, as I walk past two guys setting an engine ablaze, it will certainly help if you enjoy seeing things burst into flames. None of the cars is literally crashed in the show, though. That’s all showbiz magic – unlike the films, one of which got through 300 vehicles and not all of them Hondas.

There are a lot of assumptions made about the action genre: that only men like cars and explosions, only men like Top Gear, only men like to watch things chasing other things. But with a female associate producer, a female car choreographer (yes, that’s an actual thing) and way more female stunt drivers than you’d expect, this doesn’t feel like a boy’s own adventure at all. Almost everyone has motor racing in their background, if not their blood.

Hannah Johnson has a racing-driver father. “That’s obviously very skilled,” she says. “But this? My dad says sometimes, ‘I could do that’ – and I’m like, ‘I’m not sure you could.’”

Family ties … associate producer Hannah Johnson. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

Stunt-driver Michelle Westby, 30, used to race in a banger she built herself, but couldn’t make a living out of it. “I was working in construction,” she says, “in a hard hat and hi-vis, before I got this.” We are in the dressing room, sitting at a table with nothing on it but a bra. “I was wondering who left that there,” she says, picking it up, “and realised it was mine.”

Jess Hawkins started driving when she was eight, becoming the British go-kart champion at 13. She was making a living coaching a nine-year-old go-karter called Vinnie when this came along. “I got the lap record in my first ever race in a car,” she says. “I did Formula 4, Formula 3 and was tipped as one of the three most likely females to get to Formula 1. Not any more, though, obviously – I’m too old.” Given she’s only 22, isn’t this rather a harsh self-appraisal? “They’re all about 17,” she explains.

In theory, they could all swap cars. But, as Hawkins explains, “because we’ve had a bit of seat time, we love the cars we’re in. But I love all the cars, to be honest.” They talk as if they’re working at Battersea Dogs Home, with endless tenderness. Except it’s for cars.

The director of Top Gear once said doing the show was like organising a holiday for 12-year-old boys, then taking grown men on it. This is like burrowing into the anguished adventurousness of teens of either sex – with all that chasing and danger and yet more chasing and near-missing. It is alarming to watch, if only because you have to make peace with the fact that none of us is as far away from teenhood as we think. And the urge to watch things blow up never really goes away. But, despite the screaming engines and the screeching tyres, this new leap for the franchise is ultimately about something more than horsepower, according to Dawkins. “The final link is bringing the audience in,” she says. “That’s where the energy is.”

Nailing it … from left, stunt drivers Jodie Rasburn, Jessica Hawkins and Michelle Westby. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

From carer to stuntdriver

She may be the youngest driver in the team, but Jodie Rasburn has easily the most professorial air. While she may come across as somewhat distracted, there’s only ever one thing the 20-year-old is thinking about – cars.



“My dad used to do driving,” she says, “and I’d go to events with him.” At the age of 14, at an arena in Essex, Rasburn took up drifting – the motorsport that involves oversteering a car so that it careers along at about a 45-degree angle to its direction of travel, wheels spinning furiously and looking as if it’s just about to roly-poly off into the barriers.

“If you get into it at a young enough age,” says Rasburn, “you have a lot of courage because you just don’t care. A lot of our training here was about un-training. We had a lot of habits that didn’t work – they were too hard on the cars.”

Is it a challenge to turn the vehicle into an actor? “I feel like I get into the acting, I feel myself in the car. Then there’s the adrenaline – as soon as the lights go on, bang, you’re into driving mode. When you know you’ve nailed it, there’s nothing like that.”

Rasburn had a job, as well as a daredevil hinterland, before all this: “I was a carer, looking after dementia patients,” she says. Fast & Furious Live is a five-year run. “I can’t even think about what I’ll do afterwards,” she says. Then, almost in disbelief, she adds: “I’ll be 25.”