THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN

Adapted from Paula Hawkins’ best selling novel – an international phenomenon, over twenty million copies, made into a successful film and then dramatised for the stage this is an excellently formed psychological thriller and who-dunnit. I read the book, saw the film and the play when it toured around six years ago, and fortunately, could only remember the bones of the story and not the outcome.

Ed Harrison and Laura Whitmore, Photo: Danny Kaan

Director Loveday Ingram has taken Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel’s well crafted script and created an evening of tense theatre. The structure of overlapping present time and flashback works to great effect, the telling of the story revealed in tantalising fragments and the whole tied together by an excellent creative team. Mike Ashcroft directs linking movement in an understated way, discreet and not intrusive, The same words can be used to describe Paul Englishby’s music and a soundscape by Elizabeth Purcell adds a cinematic element to the whole. Dan Light’s video is again handled deftly and unobtrusively, setting moods and moments to match with a lighting plot by Jack Knowles that never resorts to cliche. And all this on a stark set of three gauze screens and a small raised platform, not seen throughout but employed from time to time to great effect. There are moments when through the gauzes, speckled with rain or water, we catch shadowy figures, the blurred presence of police officers in hi-vis jackets, pathologists in white cover-all suits going about their business. Adam Wiltshire has done a very fine job here, simple in one moment and complex the next, throwing Whitmore into a cuboid hamster wheel although not neccessary does add an element of real tension. Other producers of crime thrillers for the stage could learn a lot about creating dramatic suspense from watching this expertly put together piece of theatre.

And all this before even mentioning one member of the cast.

Laura Whitmore. photo: Danny Kaan

This is a story of seven people who are connected when one woman disappears, that’s not a spoiler, you know that from very early on. Megan Hipwell may well be missing but in this telling she is very much present and Freya Parks is excellent in presenting the complexity of the character. Samuel Collings plays husband Scott with great reserve and sadness but never allowing you to not think he may be guarding a guilty secret, sudden outbursts of grief are countered with outbursts of anger and aggression. Ed Harrison plays the role of Tom Watson with a balance of being likeable and caring with moments of being cruel and cavalier and Zena Carswell as his new wife and mother is brilliantly brittle, a fragility delivered with class. Daniel Burke plays the therapist in a cool and measured manner that borders on arrogance… or is it guilt?

Two roles really stand out from an excellent cast and supporting ensemble, you need a lot of understudies for a play of this complexity and their presence helps to colour the more populated elements of the story. But back to Detective Inspector Gaskell, played by Paul McEwan. We all have our heads filled with representations of senior police officers from both film and TV, we have our own local presence created by a best selling Brighton born author. McEwan uses none of that. His Gaskell is a wry, weirdly patient, understated and witty man. It’s a masterful telling of the role that works so beautifully well opposite the central character of Rachel Watson. Laura Whitmore comes to the role with a catalogue of achievements behind her name, multiple awards, different media exposures. But here, newly in the role, she proves to be a very fine actor. The character is deeply troubled, flawed and sad, such terrible sadness and anger too. You could go so over the top in the part, lurching from one side to the other, but not in Whitmore’s hands, this is delicately played, measured and very impressive. She is totally believable, plays drunk without resorting to stereotypes, plays anger with the same skills and pulls the whole together, always there but never stealing the moment.

Andrew Kay

5 June

Theatre Royal Brighton

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