Details
Location: Richmond Theatre
Dates: 11 February - 16 February, 7.30 pm (book here)
OUR VERDICT
3.5 STARS
Paula Hawkins’ novel, The Girl on the Train, was a sensation when it was first published in 2015, spending weeks at the top of best-seller lists on both sides of the Atlantic. The story, set in a fashionable city suburb, featured alcoholic Rachel Watson who travels on the train every day past her old house, partly to reminisce about her former life married to Tom and partly to fantasize about a couple who live a few doors down and who seem to have a perfect life. Rachel has lost everything – her marriage, her job, her friends – and the fantasy is her only escape… until tragedy strikes and Megan, the young wife, is missing, presumed dead.
The book was made into a film – perversely relocated to the US – starring Emily Blunt and is now a stage play, set back on British soil and curiously adapted from both the book and the film. If you’ve read the novel, you have some idea of how difficult it would be to transfer to the stage – the chapters are short and fast-paced and there are a number of layers to the story; having read it definitely helps understand the play. Yet… in many ways the play is also different from the book.
The role of Rachel is in the experienced hands of Samantha Womack (most recently in EastEnders), who stumbles around her dirty kitchen in a dishevelled state, swigging from whichever bottle comes to hand and struggles to remember what she did at the weekend. Her ex-husband Tom, played by Adam Jackson-Smith, helpfully informs her of Megan’s disappearance and that the police might be asking questions of her as she was ranting and raving in an alcoholic stupor on the night of the crime.
Rachel, with the logic and skewed determination of an alcoholic, visits Megan’s husband and strikes up a friendship of sorts with him. She is determined to get to the bottom of the crime, which infuriates and confuses Scott (Oliver Farnworth) in equal measure. Like Womack, Farnworth grows into his role, gaining confidence with every scene, delivering lines naturally and convincingly. Another shine-out performance for me was John Dougall who plays the investigating police officer, DI Gaskill with character and humour. He and Womack have the best comedy lines; for a thriller, there’s a lot of laughs.
Rachel gradually sobers up, a body is found and with evidence given in flashbacks from Megan (Kirsty Oswald) and her psychiatrist played by Naeem Hayat, the story unfolds. However, key to the plot is Tom’s manipulation of events and characters; here this is far too subtly conveyed – we hardly see him at all in the first act and even in the second his appearances are sketchy and the revelation of his true colours at the end comes as a something of a rushed surprise.
For a thrilling murder-mystery, there was nowhere near enough build-up of tension or fear to have the audience gnawing on their fingernails but there are nonetheless reasons to recommend this play: solid performances from the cast, clever set design and – at the end of the day – a classic whodunit.
Read our interview with Samantha Womack here.
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