THE RAILWAY CHILDREN.

Tour

THE RAILWAY CHILDREN
by E. Nesbit adapted by Ali Gorton

Middle Ground Theatre Company on tour
Runs 2hr 35min One interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 6 April at The Lowry

A pleasant, dutiful account of E. Nesbit's Edwardian novelFor some, this will be an enjoyable couple of hours. Others may find it too cosy - though it's hardly fair to blame Middle Ground for touring the kind of story that has filled the Royal Shakespeare and National Theatres over several recent Christmasses. Salford's well-filled half-term Lowry Quays Theatre showed there's a demand for well-loved, or at least comfortably familiar, titles.

Ali Gorton's production puts the railway central. It dominates the multi-location setting, while the banner congratulating the three children for preventing a crash hangs across the stage at the start, making it familiar when it is reinstated later in the story.

And the family break-up, poverty driving them from respectable London to rural Milford when father is mysteriously whisked away, is signified by Peter's model railway track being dismantled. The locomotive's later used as a family birthday present before the whole track's laid again in Three Chimneys (their Milford cottage) for a new friend. The toy tracks a development through hardship from complacency to responsibility.

There are staging awkwardnesses the geography of the shallow mid-stage tunnel section is perplexing, while station bunting runs into a doctor's surgery. At Three Chimneys a room is strangely concealed behind a door doubling as a bookcase with arbitrary use of this and the front door for visitors. Most importantly, the great train rescue, despite much shouting and waving, lacks theatrical verve.

Such details point to a literal production trudging dutifully through the novel's action without a clear or vivid staging concept. Some minor characters are coarsely acted, while Lynette McMorrough's Mother remains just vapidly worthy.

That leaves the adult interest with Nick Wilton's traditionally worthy railman Perks. He, and Gerry Hinks as the kindly old capitalist sympathetic with Russian dissidents, are competent and sympathetic. But it's the children's hour Peter, awestruck and suitably awkward when told father's absence makes him the man, blonde Phyllis, who'll grow to be a social success if someone who has to live with her doesn't strangle her first, and the only one not needing to grow in awareness - ever-dependable Roberta; all three are reliably played.

Peter: Mark Enticknap
Phyllis: Zoe Thorne
Mother: Lynette McMorrough
Father/Station Master/Russian: Tarquin Shaw Young
Roberta: Danielle Bygraves
James/Ten Twenty: A Puppet
Ruth/Mrs Watson/Mrs Perks: Ali Gorton
Mr Perks: Nick Wilton
Old Gentleman: Gerry Hinks
Eva/Jim: Terri Moore
Fred/Band Man/Dr Forrest: Miles Chambers

Director/Designer/Costume: Ali Gorton
Lighting: Richard Caswell
Sound/Music: Mark Taylor
Puppets: Craig Denston

2004-04-10 12:14:17