Train Driver Baz Joins The Railway Children

Slow down Mr Baz!

We all know that moment in The Railway Children….there’s been a landslide, the track is strewn with rocks and rubble that can only spell disaster for the train we can hear approaching in the distance. In the book it is gripping, whilst in Lionel Jefferies’ acclaimed movie the moment is almost terrifying. And now, thanks to the ingenuity of the National Railway Museum, Mike Kenny and Damian Cruden the spectacle is being brought to life for real in a theatre built on a reclaimed good yard near Kings Cross, as 80 tons of genuine steam train emerges, amid billows of smoke and the screeching of brakes.

So how can such a pivotal event in our nation's culture become even more exciting? Simple. You get a chance to drive the actual train!

I’ve loved trains forever and especially steam trains. So when Ben Hewis of WhatsOnStage.com, late one evening last year tweeted a request for #StageyBucketList suggestions, it only took a moment, sprawled across a sofa at home and helped by the whisky I was sipping, to promptly tweet back that given half a chance I’d love to drive the train in The Railway Children (or @TRCKingsCross as the production is called on Twitter).

Ten minutes later my phone pinged and I almost (but thankfully didn’t) spilt my scotch in surprise. It was @TRCKingsCross, tweeting back a reply and saying that they could make my wish come true!

And so it was that I found myself on the footplate of that marvellous engine, awaiting my cue to steam into the auditorium. The excitement was building, the smoke was built up back stage so that the train emerged through billowing clouds – and then, with a jolt, we were off. Lit by the orange glow of the engine’s roaring fire and with the actors on the track in front, waving desperately for me to stop the train, I desperately strived to bring this massive, beautiful machine to a brake-screeching halt. Just in time….

Stationmaster Shaun Williamson with his rookie driver

It wasn’t just the excitement of driving the train in the show though. The glimpse behind the scenes at Kings Cross was fascinating. There was Alison and Dominique in the wardrobe department who had miraculously assembled a costume that fitted me perfectly. The warm welcome of the cast who took my awestruck amateur dramatics into their bosom  and made me feel so welcome, especially the show’s regular train drivers who showed this novice just what to do. And in act two, when I was a passenger on the train, thank you Connie Hyde, who guided a terrified first-timer (me) to exactly where I had to sit and walk for the show’s Finale.

Shaun Williamson who currently leads the cast as Mr Perks was a delight and a special thanks to resident director Michael Vivian who patiently took me through a crash course (literally) in train driving, telling me where I needed to be and when.

To be invited backstage of any show is a treat, to take a peek into that world of make believe where a theatre company create their stories. But to cross the line and, for one fabulous night only, to actually become a part of that magical process we call “theatre” was, quite simply a privilege and a night I shall never forget.

A massive thank you to everyone at The Railway Children. I was chuffed!

The company of The Railway Children with their new driver

PS Before you think that letting me loose at the train’s controls was a reckless failure of health and safety by the producers, let me assure you that the technology and safety processes - and just a hint of theatre magic too - in place at the Kings Cross Theatre ensure that at all times the show's audience, cast and crew remain completely safe.

The Railway Children is now booking at the Kings Cross Theatre until 10th April 2016

Read my original review of the show 

Photography (lower two pictures) by Michael Curtis

Top picture by Johan Persson

Grease

Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford

****

Book, music and lyrics by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey
Directed by Michael Vivian

One of many stunning dance moments from the GSA class of 2014

The audience for Grease, on a Monday night in refined Guildford with the River Wey in near flood-like spate, may well have been more blue-rinsed than Brylcreem’d but along with the cast’s family and friends they packed out the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre. There, they witnessed the GSA class of 2014 morph into the Rydell High graduates of ‘58 in this all-American tale of rites of passage that over many years and countless disco mega-mixes, has been so forcibly injected into our culture.

We know the songs and the story, so with little to surprise us in the plot it is down to the cast’s talent and the show’s production values to impress. And at times this production is truly breathtaking, never better than when the full ensemble pack the stage to execute Phyllida Crowley-Smith’s inspired dance work. If the Rydell girls sing and act, en masse, better than the boys, (which generally they do) then the lads’ movement, which was at times almost acrobatic, more than makes up for it. The agile, technical excellence that the dancers display in Grease Lightning and the show’s carnival like finale, to name but two memorable moments, suggests the jaw-dropping choreography of David Toguri in his pomp.

Like all drama school productions, the focus here is on the company rather than upon the leading characters. That being said, there are still some stand-out performances on offer. Ones to watch from this year’s graduation are Erik West, whose bespectacled square-jawed Eugene is a masterclass in akward geek and who when the Rocky Horror show is next being cast should be a nailed on Brad. Elizabeth Walker admirably tackled the challenge that is Sandy. To plausibly play the pink-clad saint-like virgin, who falls from grace to become a cigarette smoking high heeled hussy ain't easy but Walker pulls it off. Andy Owens’ Doody singing These Magic Changes was perhaps the most charismatic male vocal turn, but the truly spine-tingling performance of the night came from Ellie Ann Lowe’s take on the grizzled Rizzo. Lowe skilfully explored the layers of this brash and ballsy yet still damaged and complex character with empathy beyond her years and her solo, the not often heard “There Are Worse Things I Could Do” was deeply moving in its honest intensity.

For the townsfolk of Guildford, Grease makes for a grand night out. The staging is clever, the laughs are familiar and corny and so long as the teeming Wey stays within its banks, there truly are worse things you could do than give these talented undergraduates full houses for the rest of the week.

Runs until 15th February

Photography by Mark Dean