THEATRE REVIEW:
THE RAILWAY CHILDREN
8 MAY/11

JOHN COULBOURN,
QMI Agency
Rating: 4 out of 5


TORONTO - If you’re the kind who thinks that the trip should be every bit as much an adventure as the departure and arrival, then THE RAILWAY CHILDREN might be just the ticket, if you’re looking for a summer theatre jaunt.


Direct from Britain where it apparently played to enthralled audiences, the York Theatre Royal’s production (in association with the National Railway Museum) of Mike Kenny’s stage adaptation of Edith Nesbit’s THE RAILWAY CHILDREN opened under the big-top of the new Roundhouse Theatre yesterday, offering a round trip ticket to the Victorian era to all comers.


As departures go, this voyage begins in a rather quiet way. Although the extensive cast is fully arrayed in period costume when they first confront their audience, they are very much of today as they do the theatrical equivalent of warm-up exercises, drawing that audience slowly into their sphere and gently leading them on the first step of their voyage. And soon, thanks to the collective efforts of siblings Roberta (Natasha Greenblatt), Peter (Harry Judge) and Phyllis (Kate Besworth), in whose memory that story plays out, we are at home in Victorian London, sharing the upper middle-class existence of a senior civil servant and his family. But not for long, for the children’s beloved father (Richard Sheridan Willis) is suddenly taken away.


The three children are then whisked away to a strange new home in Yorkshire by their mother (Emma Campbell), there to dwell in genteel and anonymous poverty, as the Dreyfus-esque details of their father’s fate are slowly revealed. Turns out however, that Victorian kids were still kids after all, and, after some initial mis-steps with the locals, our threesome is soon in thrall not only to the kind-hearted local station master (Craig Warnock), but to the railway which he serves — the daily London-bound train serving as an imaginary conduit to carry their best wishes to their missing father.


It’s all a sort of steam-driven re-telling of Little Women, complete with stiff upper-lips, life lessons, mysterious foreigners and ripping adventures — and not surprisingly, heroics and heart-warming resolutions ensue. The story moves at an often stately pace, giving an audience plenty of time to appreciate the quality performances of a supporting cast that also includes John Gilbert, Alison Deon (standing in for Laura Schutt), Doug MacLeod and a host of others. As the childish Phyllis, Besworth is a delight, but Judge’s preciousness, masquerading as brattiness, fast wears thin. But that’s only half the story, of course, for this is as much an adventure in stagecraft as it is in storytelling, cooked up by director Damian Cruden and designer Joanna Scotcher. Together, they turn their new tent-theatre and the railway track that runs through it into a slice of industrial age Britain— albeit an industrial age with most of the grit and virtually all of the grime removed.


Complete with an antique steam engine that makes a couple of pivotal appearances and ever-shifting set pieces to keep the story moving , it makes for an experience that might even make you forgive seating that seems to have been borrowed from the immigrant trains that ran across Canada in the same era. So, all aboard — but bring a cushion!