THE RAILWAY CHILDREN (National Railway Museum/York Theatre Royal/The Shows Must Go On)*****

 

By Angel

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6JS1RfMf4w

Available until: 23^rd December

The Railway Children is my favourite play. Between 2014 and 2017, it was shown at King’s Cross Theatre on a real train track, though it’s not part of the King’s Cross Station. It is a theatre with a set. I think it was only on at Christmas but perhaps that is something my parents told me so they wouldn’t have to take me too often.

Before that The Railway Children was on at Waterloo, on the platforms used by Eurostar between November 1994 and November 2007, at which point they transferred to St Pancras. One of them came back into regular use in 2014 but the others remained disused until December 2018 or May 2019 (they didn’t all come back into use at once), apart from being used during refurbishment works in December 2013 and upgrades in August 2017. Between July 2010 and January 2011 two of the platforms were used for The Railway Children.

However the production was first seen at the National Railway Museum in York and that is the version that was filmed.

Mike Kenny has written the adaption for the play and I think it’s good. It is quite soppy (which I wasn’t quite so aware of when I was younger) but the book is soppy so you can’t argue with that. I’ll put up with a lot of soppy things in order to see trains. The book feels like a series of short stories but there is a story running through the whole of the book. Mike Kenny does a good job of linking the short stories together and making it feel like one long story. It’s not all there but it works. The children do some narration but mostly it’s acted out.

The set is a single track with a platform either side. The track is a real track which led to the former York Goods Station but the platforms were constructed especially for the play. The audience sit on the platforms. The characters use the railway, the edges of the platforms, a bridge linking the platforms (which looks really authentic) and bits of staging which move along the track and can either represent trains or be joined together with the platform to create a larger stage area. It’s designed by Joanna Scotcher and it works really well.

The production is famous for having real steam trains and they are the stars for me. Trains are usually represented by the bits of staging like I said but for big scenes an actual steam train drives along the track. In this production it is GNR (Great Northern Railway) 4–2–2 No.1 of 1870 (Stirling Single class) which was an express passenger train between York and London. It’s the only one of its class to be preserved and was taken out of service some time between 1899 and 1916. This train also appeared in the Waterloo production but not at King’s Cross Theatre.

The train isn’t really in steam in this production but it looks like it is which is good enough for me. Those bits are really exciting and the train drivers are Noel Hartley, Charlie Bird, Adrian Ashby, Simon Holroyd and Dan Holmes. I used to want to be a train driver just like them but it’s quite likely trains will be driverless by the time I’m old enough to drive them so I thought I might work for London Transport instead.

Damian Cruden does a good job of directing the play for the stage. It is quite complicated with the set moving around and the characters having to run up and down the platforms and over the bridge but it all fits together really well and it never feels like the action stops while a bit of set gets into the right place. There is always something going on.

The children are a bit annoying in places because they’re often either arguing or being so good, you wonder what they’re really up to but you do mostly get used to that. Rozzi Nicholson-Lailey who plays Roberta has the most challenging role and she does well at all the emotions. Isaak Cainer is good as Peter who is obviously trying to be a man but ends up looking like a prat sometimes. Beth Lilly is funny as Phyllis.

The adults aren’t as fully developed as characters but Andrina Carroll is good as the mother and Martin Barrass is really likeable as Perks. Rob Angell plays the father, the doctor and the railway man and he’s good at all of them. It makes sense for them all to be played by the same actor as none of them are big roles but I’ve always thought it was a bit of an own goal as there’s a really important bit near the end where you really need to know exactly who the character is and if you don’t know the play, you might be kind of wondering “Is that the father, the doctor, the railway man or someone else?” and you don’t really want people to be wondering that.

But maybe people who don’t know the story remember all the characters well enough to know who it is. I’ve never seen it with anyone who didn’t know the story already so it’s hard to be sure about that.

The Railway Children is only available for 48 hours and it’ll be closer to 24 by the time this goes up so hurry up and watch it, it’s totally free and you’ll get to see GNR 4–2–2 No.1 of 1870.