In theory, E Nesbit’s classic story The Railway Children has all the ingredients and potential for a very successful stage show. There are endearing characters, nice locations and the opportunity for some amazing special effect and there is even an ending weepy enough to ensure a lot of damp hankies.
Production company Talking Scarlet is touring an ambitious musical adaptation which just scrapes by, but only by the skin of its teeth. I think it is maybe too ambitious for its own good and lacks a skillful, imaginative hand at the helm.
It was also, it seems, mounted quite cheaply. The set consists of a couple of rostrums, two free-standing doors and some bits of furniture, but that in itself should not be a restraint. I can think of a couple of shows (The Woman in Black and The 39 Steps) which use little more but achieve staggeringly good productions. The Railway Children was all very half-hearted – there was some good lighting, but not much, there were some imaginative effects but not many, and the lack-lustre and very dim back-projection was sometimes there and sometimes wasn’t.
There were some bits of corner-cutting which were laughable. For example, I particularly liked the Russian émigré, Shepansky, who appears from nowhere, has a cough and a spit and is spirited away to an upstairs room and is never seen again. Eventually the Old Gentleman announces he has found the poor exile’s family and one of the girls, jumping with glee, shouts “I’ll go and tell him”, dashes off stage and comes back a minute later with the line “I told him.” In most of the ensemble scenes the mother, while playing another character, made no attempt to look any different and it was clear the other woman on the train was a man in a frock, no matter how many feathers he had in his hat.
The company of seven did a reasonable job handling some quite complex ensemble numbers but it was Ben Sleep, as Perks, the station porter, who held the whole thing together. The two girls were fine and just about believable as children, but poor twenty-something Bex Roberts, as Peter, had his work cut out trying to persuade us he was ten.
The show obviously appeals to children – there were a lot in the audience last night – but the songs are often far too sophisticated (and long) for them to follow (or, it must be said, for the cast to sing in many cases). There are no “fun” songs and most of the plot-developing lyrics are too intricate and sung too fast for even the adults to follow at times.
That, I think, is the show’s main problem – it falls between two stools. It is far too simplistic and under produced to appeal to adults but the songs and musical score are much too complex for children to follow – there was a fair bit of fidgeting in my part of the stalls. That said, I think there is a nugget of a good show here. A bit of imagination, a new lighting plot and a decent regime for the back-projection could do the trick. ★★★☆☆ Michael Hasted 26th May 2016
