Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford – until 13th July 2019
Reviewed by Antonia Hebbert
5*****
Rachel, an alcoholic with a messed-up life, becomes obsessed with the perfect-seeming couple she sees from the train every day. She even invents names for them. Then the woman, ‘Jess’, disappears and is found dead. In an alcoholic haze, Rachel involves herself in the police investigation and lies her way into the husband’s confidence. At the same time she is a menacing presence in her ex-husband’s idyllic new marriage. Is Rachel a fantasist, a stalker or worse? Or none of the above? As she struggles to work out what’s real and what’s just in her head, the audience is also left guessing – or at least they would be, if most of them didn’t already know the story. This play is based on Paula Hawkins’s 2015 bestseller The Girl on The Train, which has sold millions of copies and was released as a film in 2016, so the plot will be quite familiar to many.
No worries that this production will be too familiar however. It ratchets up the tension, with notable help from Ben and Max Ringham’s dark, moody music. The set is equally dark and moody: sometimes the players appear in a black space, sometimes they are in highly realistic, just-right interiors (set designs are by James Cotterill). There is something satisfyingly menacing about the way Rachel’s grim little kitchen clunks together when it first appears. In another nice touch, audience members returning to their seats after the interval find that the stage has become a crime scene.
The casting seems just right too. Rachel is brilliantly played by Samantha Womack, better known as Ronni Mitchell in BBC1’s EastEnders. She holds the stage while coming across convincingly as someone who has hit rock bottom and can barely string together a sentence. Oliver Farnworth (also familiar from Coronation Street) is the grieving (or is he?) bereaved husband; Kirsty Oswald his dead wife, appearing in memories and flashbacks. Adam Jackson-Smith and Lowenna Melrose are the happy (or are they?) couple, whose life seems to highlight the inadequacy of Rachel’s own. John Dougall brings brisk dry humour to the proceedings as the detective looking at the case, although in a way he is incidental to the way things work out – this story is all about the relationships between the various couples. As Rachel sorts out her own life, she begins to see that other lives may not be as perfect as they seem.
It may not be entirely realistic – would Rachel really have found out as much as she does? But with gloom, deception, death and a few heartstopping moments, it all adds up to a grand night out at the theatre.