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Stars explained: * A production of no real merit
with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not
enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real
life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A
good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely
achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a
great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major
flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic
which lifts theatre to another plane. |
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Jill Simkin as DI Gaskill with Francesca Rees as Rachel The Girl on the Train Grange Playhouse **** Paula Hawkins’ debut best selling psychological novel has crossed the tracks from page to stage to create a gripping thriller to keep audiences guessing, a whodunit hidden away in the befuddled mind of the eponymous girl. The eponymous girl being Rachel Watson, a troubled divorcee at times battling, at times embracing alcoholism, as she both remembers and tries to forget her happy and sad times as Mrs Watson. She passes her old home where ex-husband Tom and new wife Anna live, watching from the train on her way to work each day, and a couple of doors away she sees the home of their neighbours, Megan and Scott Hipwell, in her mind the perfect, idyllic couple, living the life of love and romance she desperately wants but never had. She creates a whole life for them in her mind where they have become Jess and Jason and when Jess, or really Megan, disappears, madness and memory, or what little of it can be recalled, combine in an obsession to find her “friend”, a woman she never met or even knew apart from glimpses from the train and the life she had created for her. The whole play depends on one character, Rachel, and Francesca Rees does an absolutely sterling job as the confused, irrationally consumed drunk on a mission. It is a stunning performance, subtle and nuanced. She never staggers or slurs words, she is a functioning alcoholic not a pantomime drunk, and you can feel her pain and frustration as she struggles to remember the most obvious details, even struggling to recall how she was battered on the head on the night of Megan's disappearance.
Gareth May as Scott with his wife, the missing Megan played by Abby Leigh Simpson She carries the tell tale signs of the drunk, the constant water bottle, usually full with vodka in the mistaken belief it has no smell, a dingy flat that could be mistaken as a bottle bank, the excuses for the mess of empties and discarded pizza boxes - “we had a party”. And we feel her struggles as she stops her drinking and the mist that had been masking her memories slowly fades under the gaze of sobriety. We see Megan only in flashbacks, sometimes moments of lucidity in Rachel’s addled mind, sometimes memories recalled by Megan’s husband, or her therapist . . . Rachel’s idyllic picture of Jess is shown to be merely fantasy. Abby Leigh Simpson comes into her own as Megan when her own secret, the guilt she has carried all her adult life is revealed in a heartrending moment when you really do feel for her. It is a wonderfully controlled emotional moment. Meanwhile Gareth May’s Scott is ideal suspect material. As we all know when wives go missing, with police taking a more than usual interest, the husband tops the suspect list. We discover Rachel’s vision of Jason as the ideal, loving husband was somewhat awry. May makes him a little shifty at times. While Megan runs an art gallery and appreciates culture, Scott, you suspect, is more at the Philistine end of society. Not only that he is prone to bouts of anger and temper, not averse to a touch of violence it seems but he shows a certain degree of insecurity and jealousy. As for the other Mrs Watson, Anna, Helen Freebury makes sure we know that she and Rachel do not get on, hardly surprising as Rachel has a tendency to phone up or even turn up in a drunken rant, followed by a drunken sorry, then another drunken rant. Anna seems to adore Tom, never doubting him as an ideal husband. At least she seem to do . . . Rachel and Tom never managed to have a child despite trying every option which Rachel feels would have made their marriage complete while Tom and Anna have a daughter, Evie, which only serves to deepen Rachel’s pain and increase her drinking and the rants.
David Weller as the Therapist Ross Savekar and Francesca Rees as Rachel Tom, another reliable performance from Rod Bissett, is a steadying force, or so it seems initially. It is a clever portrayal. At first Tom is concerned for Rachel, trying to help her, he even admits his part in their marriage break up, says sorry, and you find you have some sympathy with him. As we go on though the Mr Nice Guy image starts to struggle a little, there are hints of a controlling nature, hints of manipulation, the feeling Tom’s image is what Tom wants you to see and what you see is very much controlled by him. The Watsons, Mk II in Anna’s case, knew Megan as she used to babysit for them. We never did find the real reason why that had tailed off . . . The final member of Megan’s circle was Ross Savekar, played with the air of a medical professional by David Weller. Weller gives us a softly spoken, not quite kosher you feel, therapist who had been treating Megan for . . . well, patient confidentiality and all that, and maybe a more personal reticence to divulge details as he had been seen with Megan by Rachel from her train hideaway the morning before she disappeared. They were on Megan’s terrace and . . . let’s just say physical examinations are not seen as a regular treatment by therapists. That puts him in the frame and there were others, from the past, people she could have gone to find or a place she could have gone to stay such as the ramshackle cottage on the beach in Norfolk where she used to live. While Rachel stumbled around the gaps in her memory desperate to solve the mystery of the missing “friend” she had never met, leading the more, should we say, structured hunt was Jill Simkin, as DI Gaskill, who, as a recovering alcoholic, had at least got some sympathy and understanding for Rachel.
Rod Bissett as Tom with Helen Freebury as wife Anna with Rachel on the floor behind It is hardly a spoiler to say it does not end well for Megan but how it ended that way, the whos, the whys, that’s what grips the audience, as bit by bit the picture forms, like pieces in a jigsaw. The set is simple and minimalist, as it needs to be with its multitude of scenes including in the underpass, Rachel’s run down flat, the police station, Savekar’s office, as well as the homes of both the Watsons and Megan and Scott, the street outside Tom’s gym, even a park bench . . . and then there is the train. And it is the train where there is an issue. The first visit to the carriage is inventive, a line of four chairs appear with passengers in the usual train mode of reading papers, a book, texting or in Rachel’s case, swigging water, with Sam Evans’ sound and Stan Vigurs’ moving train window projected lighting creating a clever impression of Rachel’s daily commute. The second time, we know what to expect, but to have the chairs appear again and again between scenes takes up time and starts to become an unnecessary distraction breaking momentum. A shortened version, perhaps just sound and lighting, would do wonders for pacing. Not a huge issue, the excellent acting carries the story along quite beautifully, but it would benefit if they could carry it along with shorter stops at every station along the line. The play concentrates on Rachel, it is her story as much, if not more than Megan’s and Rees commands the role, at first appearing to struggle with reality and gradually finding her way painfully back into the world she has tried to block out. She is supported by an excellent cast who play their part in building the tension and truth of what happened. But we end as we started with Rachel; she was drunk, wallowing in her old life at the start, and is sober and, at least looking to the future with hope at the end. We wish her well. Directed by Dawn Vigurs, Rachel will be desperately seeking Megan to 22-03-25 Roger Clarke 14-03-25 |
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