The Railway Children presented n the track and platforms of the former Eurostar terminal at Waterloo.
To coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Academy Award nominated film, Mike Kenny’s new adaptation of E. Nesbit’s novel The Railway Children will be performed at a unique venue at Waterloo Station in the former Eurostar terminal. The auditorium, created especially for this production, will be built with the audience seated either side of the original railway track, with the action taking place both on the track and on the platforms either side. The production, which uses the old Gentleman’s saloon carriage from the original classic film, will also feature a period steam train from the National Railway Museum in York.
The Railway Children Live At Waterloo Station
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3.7 (7) |  |
0.0 (0) |
| Venue | Waterloo Station (click for full venue information) |
General
| Genres | 20th Century • Children's Theatre • Drama |
| Begins previews | 04 July 2010 |
| Opening | 12 July 2010 |
| Closing / Booking until | 02 January 2011 |
| Show times | 7.30pm Mon, Wed-Sat; 2.30pm Thu/Sat; 1.00pm/5.00pm Sun |
| Production website | http://www.railwaychildrenwaterloo.com/ |
| Prices from | £20.50 |
| To | £45.50 |
| Running time | TBC |
Cast & Creatives
- Director Damian Cruden
- Designer Jo Scotcher
- Lighting design Richard G. Jones
Editor reviews
Average editor rating from: 7 user(s)
Enthralling
| Rating: | 4.0 |
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Mike Kenny’s adaptation shows his mastery of playwriting for children and families. Like Nesbit, he does not talk down to youngsters. He delineates the central trio well, without overemphasising their age differences: Sarah Quintrell’s Roberta is the most responsible by nature, not because she is the eldest, and the lioness’s share of laugh lines given to (and fully merited by) Louisa Clein as Phyllis are neither infantile nor winsome. Kenny and director Damian Cruden deal beautifully with Nesbit’s Fabian values, which here emerge simply as matters of decency and dutiful kindness; they also make explicit the dimension of the unspoken, as the family avoid talking about what has happened to their father but constantly feel its weight. Marshall Lancaster, already an endearing presence from BBC TV’s Life On Mars and Ashes To Ashes, ably succeeds Bernard Cribbins, his celluloid predecessor in the role of railway porter Bert Perks. Throughout the evening, adults and children alike are enthralled by the clever mix of imagination and reality. |
| Written by | Ian Shuttleworth |
| Full review | http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/851d131e-9024-11df-ad26-00144feab49a.html |
Lovely
| Rating: | 4.0 |
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But here’s the surprise: the clever set and the loco are not the stars at all, nor is it a watery tribute to the film. E.Nesbit, early socialist, self-supporting scribbler, quirkiest and least patronising of children’s authors, is well served. In Mike Kenny’s clever adaptation there are plenty of her spirited jokes, and no punches pulled in her uncompromising acknowledgement of poverty, loss, class unease and the crushing shame of the father’s absence. I took the precaution of borrowing a nine-year-old who had never seen the film or heard of the book, and he got it, absolutely, and emerged saying “brilliant”. Of course the engine is a thrill (a smaller child behind me crooned “O the train so beautiful, oh the great big wheel . . .”). But it’s a real play and asks its audience for real theatre imagination: the characters as adults are relating a strange, charmed summer at the same time as they play their romping younger selves. They narrate, and other characters stay within the fiction, conjured up by memory: the strong-minded mother (Caroline Harker), the touchy porter Perks, the Russian dissident they rescue and the Old Gentleman. Peter and Phyllis (a larky Louisa Clein) have the funny lines but the play must stand or fall with Roberta, the eldest. Seemingly unfazed by the yearning national nostalgia for Jenny Agutter, up steps young Sarah Quintrell and she is wonderful. In the addresses to the audience she could have been arch, but isn’t; in her family scenes she could seem goody-goody, but expresses real inward pain and thoughtfulness. When she discovers her father’s disgrace and confronts her mother, their stages slide apart in as strong a moment as any adult play, and even the youngest leaned forward, worried and breathless. Her final run up the platform, to the cloud of steam which parts to show her Daddy, upstaged even the still-panting engine. Lovely. |
| Written by | Libby Purves |
| Full review | http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/stage/theatre/article2641127.ece |
Not enough charm or joy in the acting
| Rating: | 3.0 |
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| Review | You might wander on to Waterloo Station looking for the next train to Woking and find yourself hurtling back in time to an Edwardian country station in Yorkshire, with three children in petticoats and a tweed suit waving at an Old Gentleman on the "down" train back to the capital. And instead of boarding a modern commuter diesel, you can fantasise once more about Jenny Agutter as the teenage nearly-woman and Bernard Cribbins as the station master, stepping their way through a north-and-south class minefield in the 1970 movie. |
| Written by | Michael Coveney |
| Full review | http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/the-railway-children-waterloo-station-theatre-london-2025767.html |
An admirable feat of technical engineering
| Rating: | 3.0 |
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It’s an engaging and occasionally thrilling occasion – especially when the gleaming green locomotive puffs into view along the railway tracks – but there are a few narrative loose ends: how exactly is the children’s father sprung from prison after serving time as a suspected spy? And how does the boy who breaks his leg in the tunnel not get killed by the rushing train? There’s a lack of real charm, too, in the acting, despite the best efforts of Sarah Quintrell to challenge a still prevalent national crush on Jenny Agutter in the role of the elder daughter in the 1970 movie; Marshall Lancaster to provide his own chirpiness, and chippiness, as the station master Albert Perks; and Caroline Harker to be both firm, and poorly, as the displaced mother, trying to make ends meet by writing sort stories. |
| Written by | Michael Coveney |
| Full review | http://www.whatsonstage.com/reviews/theatre/london/E8831279009730/The+Railway+Children.html |
The staging alone is a marvel
| Rating: | 4.0 |
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| Review | The headaches this must have caused Health and Safety can only be guessed at, but the upshot is a delightfully fluid production from Damian Cruden, suggesting both the continual movement of the railway itself and the narrative momentum that propels kind-hearted Bobbie, Peter and Phyllis to their eventual happy ending. |
| Written by | Fiona Mountford |
| Full review | http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/theatre/review-23855479-full-steam-ahead-for-the-railway-children.do |
Take some beating as a summer holiday treat
| Rating: | 4.0 |
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| Review | Damian Cruden’s production has great freshness and ingenuity, using blasts of steam and thunderous sound effects to suggest the passage of steam trains, while the landslide in which the children wave the girls’ red petticoats to avert disaster is presented with great theatrical panache. |
| Written by | Charles Spencer |
| Full review | http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/7887213/The-Railway-Children-Waterloo-Station-review.html |
Glorious
| Rating: | 4.0 |
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Kenny's version brings out Nesbit's radicalism, while the staging is intensely imaginative. Joanna Scotcher's design places the audience on facing platforms between which the action whizzes back and forth, giving the story a dynamic momentum and striking images: the collapse of a cutting is evoked by a tumbled heap of luggage; and the mysterious old gentleman, the children's fairy godfather, is seen heading off in a distant vista of steam. The coup de theatre, however, is the arrival of the green-and-gold, 66-ton Stirling Single locomotive to remind one of a lost age when railway engineering was a source of pride and pleasure. Once or twice the story cuts corners, but the production's virtue is the actors are never upstaged by the impressive effects – flashing lights, jets of steam, and thunderous sounds of passing trains. Sarah Quintrell is a model of crisp common sense as Roberta; Caroline Harker as the mother reveals occasional tetchiness beneath the good samaritan; and Marshall Lancaster as the porter blends kindliness with the prickliness of someone who won't be patronised. It's a story about class, community and treating others with respect, and, in Cruden's excellent production, it never for a moment runs out of steam. |
| Written by | Michael Billington |
| Full review | http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/jul/13/the-railway-children-theatre-review |
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