Review by Simon Jenner, June 5th 2025
A bright strip of houses blurring at speed against blackness; a woman staring, then a bed fills a segment of the stage. The woman has seen something to make her sick, now she’s remembering it. Directed by Loveday Ingram, Paula Hawkins’ 2015 thriller The Girl On The Train adapted by Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel is back to the burbs after its 2019 tour. This slick production arrives at the Theatre Royal Brighton till June 7th on the first leg of a brief tour taking this show to Milton Keynes. So catch it here first.
Photo Credit: Steve Tanner.
It’s better than its 2016 Emily Blunt-starring American iteration. Stage-adaptors Wagstaff and Abel return to the British original which makes far more sense since there’s no commuter belt in the U. S. They inject more humour, more pizzazz and a satisfying storyline. This time though the humour’s muted and some visceral detail (it opened last time with Rachel vomming into a pizza box) is too. Nevertheless Laura Whitmore as Rachel makes a deep impression as the eponymous girl on the train looking out every day at the perfect young couple, wishing she was them. Careful. Whitmore as the alcoholic-for-a-reason infuses seriousness and a haunted dimension to Rachel.
There’s scattered empties never bagged. Rachel necks a bottle of wine and her ex-husband Tom knocks on the door, asking if after a row with his new wife Anna, Rachel was near the underpass? A young woman, their former baby-sitter Megan has gone missing and Rachel has a severe cut over her eye, remembers blood on her hands. Tom wants the best for her, tries to help Rachel piece together anything she might have witnessed: since the police might be here, it’s important she gets it right.
Unlike the previous elaborate design (which I miss), Adam Wiltshire’s stark set and costume design is striking for its visuals (Dan Light’s projections are the star) and deploys recessional frames moulded by light: hence the clearing-away. Jack Knowles’ superb lighting (he also lit the 2019 production) often brushes chill edges which lends a clinical, unsettling feel. The sets pull away on occasion and we’re left with smoky scenes and frightening blackness. Paul Englishby’s score riffs on Bernard Herman chords, as Elizabeth Purnell (usually a composer) thwunks the sound envelope.
So why is Rachel the one living with unpaid rent when Tom was unfaithful? In a world of isolation spelt social media, Rachel Watson’s clearly going nowhere, as Whitmore portrays her. Through a numbed nagging at herself she asks for a pic of Megan Tom has, and privately knows what to do. She’s never met Megan, but she’s been calling her Jess for months; and saw her on the underpass. Ed Harrison’s Tom hovers, protective of Anna, judgmentally non-judgmental. He reminds her of that time she swung at him with a golf-club (re-enacted simultaneously with an ensemble cast-member).
Freya Parks’s Megan too drifts in and out, as an apparition then increasingly someone with a story to tell. Megan’s the perfect girl kissing the perfect husband Rachel looked out for on her commute, even when she didn’t have to, passing Megan’s window. It’s the world social media promises, right there at a glance-by. A young woman Rachel saw kissing someone else the day before she vanished.
Visiting her analyst Kamal (Daniel Burke, suave, defensive, ultimately far more), she works out who. Posing as Megan’s friend Rachel visits husband Scott Hipwell (edgy Samuel Collings) who’s been cleaning the flat rather obviously. A wing-broken magpie he had to mercy-kill. He’s a vegetarian, so when Tom and Anna turn up with Moroccan chicken cous-cous and find Rachel and Scott on a second visit – things become compromising. Especially Rachel’s logged call to Megan’s mobile. But that was when she was with Collings’ Scott; who hovers between vulnerability, blind temper (using the same words he threatened Megan with in a voicemail) and attraction.
And who’ll believe Rachel? Paul McEwan’s D.I. Gaskell, always needling her with wasting police time, a delusional woman whose empty life’s filled with voyeuristic posing? And the drinking?
Pest-labelled Rachel has reasons to believe Zena Carswell’s perfect Anna knows something. There’s a development, Rachel is taken to it. Meanwhile, digging on her own, Rachel discovers more from analyst Kamal than he wants to admit.
Whitmore deftly conveys Rachel’s numbed state, then gradual jerky recovery as she eschews drink and remembers how she got off-course. A discovery to map others. Colling’s Scott projects edgy vulnerability – a veggie touched with violence, while McEwan is all avuncular scepticism, with Scots tales of his alky father. Harrison’s high liberal anxieties nicely morph into protective fire, and Carswell’s character blossoms late as Anna and Rachel finally talk. Burke’s calm neatly explodes and there’s a vivid, vulnerable reveal that fits. Parks’ fragile Megan becomes compelling when we know her story, and she trusts her listener. Ellie Gallimore and Oliver Joseph Brooke swell the ensemble.
The superb technical wizardry keeps this very slightly dated thriller lights on its imaginary feet. Though this genre gives relatively little character depth, all actors vivify them with solid performances, McEwan relishing mordant one-liners. Whitmore’s given the most opportunity, though has to play out through a gauze of sobering-up isolation. She compels and lends this play a bleak heart it didn’t have before. The applause she receives is well-deserved. And the comedy? There’s nothing in the book or film to match moments when Gaskill addresses “Mrs Watson?” Both Rachel and Anna answer him, and later we remember the moment. Only theatre can do that. Superb entertainment.
Casting Director Ginny Schiller CDG, Movement Director Mike Ashcroft, Assistant Director Rachel Heyburn, Production Manager Tony Darvill, Costume Supervisor Marion Harrison.
CSM Andrew Owen, DSM Elspeth Watt, ASM (on Book) Ellie Cummings, LX Video 1 Aaron McNaughton, LX Video 2 Isobel Toms, Tech Swing Jenni Chivers, Head of Wardrobe Sam Gray.
Photo Credit: Steve Tanner.
