The Girl on the Train
Chichester Festival Theatre
Tuesday 25 February – Saturday 1 March 2025
Director: Loveday Ingram
Adapted for stage by Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel
It seems almost unbelievable that it’s 10 years since Paula Hawkins’ unique page-turning psychological thriller ‘The Girl on the Train’, hit the bookshops, selling several million copies almost immediately. It was a riveting read, and no surprise that the film rights were soon sold. Perhaps it was only a matter of time before the eponymous story would be transferred to theatres.
Before I made a reservation on the train, I certainly had my own reservations about the stage dramatisation of the novel, predominantly the question of getting the main protagonists, ie the ‘girl’ and the ‘train’ to give us their messages when (in the novel) the girl is the main narrator, possibly an unreliable one, and the train is both her comfort zone on her daily commute to London, and her voyeuristic escape via its windows.
‘The Girl’ is Rachel, a long time depressive alcoholic, withdrawn from normal life and living in a spare room in an erstwhile friend’s house, having been divorced from Tom for the last 2 years, and sacked from her job 6 months ago, both due to her excessive drinking. Yet she continues to make the daily commute to London, on the same trains morning and evening, in a sad effort to normalise her life but at the same time knocking back cans of vodka mixes and those handbag sized bottles of Chardonnay. Each day she passes the house where she used to live with her former husband Tom; he still does, but now with second wife Anna and their baby daughter Evie. Rachel is stalking Tom on a daily basis, constantly leaving him drunken messages on the ‘phone, which are upsetting Anna rather a lot. Rachel also regularly sees their near neighbours (in reality Scott and Megan), and envisions their perfect life together – the life she has craved – naming them ‘Jason and Jess’, creating a fantasy inside her head of being a close friend of Jess.
Then one day, she witnesses a real life event on the terrace of Megan and Scott, followed by Megan’s seemingly inexplicable disappearance, taking Rachel on a frenzied path of obsessive sleuthing, fixated on discovering and exposing what is actually going on behind the closed doors of the middle class populated Blenheim Road. At the same time, her parallel path of fiction and self-destruction continues.
So, this adaptation was always going to present several challenges: the original device was that of multi narration; the vast majority of narrative based on what Rachel is thinking and just how credible her thoughts are. We find this also applies to what’s going on in Megan’s head too. The writers (Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel) have pretty well stayed true to the basic storyline, however they’ve appeared to have created significant changes, some albeit unavoidable, in conveying it to the static stage. Some original characters are missing, notably Cathy, whose room Rachel rents, in my view a pivotal role. Cathy is essentially a sympathetic character who becomes increasingly impatient with Rachel’s erratic drunken actions, initially feeling sorry for her but with no idea about her unemployment and the consequent lie she is living. We gain much more of an insight into Rachel’s ‘home’ life via her evening interactions with Cathy, and her attempts to hide the extent of her further descent into alcoholism. The fact that Cathy is blissfully unaware of the lie Rachel lives at least gives the situation some fraction of amelioration, missing in this stage version.
The hugely meaty part of Rachel Watson, never off stage, is delivered by the multi-talented Giovanna Fletcher (‘Everyone’s Talking about Jamie’, ‘2:22 A Ghost Story’ and much more). Ms Fletcher gives it all she’s got and you have to hand it to her: she manages to convey a multitude of character facets extremely ably. The writers, though, have also decided to transform Rachel’s character into a, at times, slightly comical more temperate drinker, losing much of the force of her sozzled hysterical outbursts to Tom. She also metamorphoses from an alcoholic obsessive fantasist, having frequent blackouts and bouts of memory loss, into a similarly obsessive but markedly more coherent sleuth.
Megan, ethereally played by Natalie Dunne, regularly wafts in and out following her disappearance, interacting in the present and a series of flashbacks, and is highly effective in demonstrating her own transformation. Jason Merrells delivers a hugely sympathetic performance as Tom, Rachel’s long suffering ex husband, appearing to be devoted to his somewhat mousey wife Anna (Zena Carswell) whilst at the same time, clearly still feeling some affection for Rachel, anxious about her welfare, and in my opinion, far too tolerant of her constant stalking and late-night intoxicated ‘phone calls. This understandably irritates poor Anna.
The other members of the cast were quite believable, and the plot moved at a fast pace. Plus there are some very clever techniques with the staging and scene changes, the sound and lighting effects are superb (Tom Shipman, Laura Howells) especially in the final, explosive scene when it all comes together.
I have a slight issue with the fact that, although some ingenious effects were achieved giving us the illusion of a window on a moving train on the backdrop, the views through it were a little puzzling. The whole point underlying Rachel’s obsession with what she sees through the window is when it has stopped at signals near Blenheim Road, not when the train is in motion. Together with the opening and a further scene showing Rachel and other, standing, commuters gave the distinct impression they were travelling on a London tube, not seated in a train carriage with a table between her and passengers opposite, where Rachel could easily glug her essential supply of grog. Perhaps I’m being a little picky here …
Whilst admiring the robust performance from Giovanna Fletcher, recognising the essential need to give us the full effect of Rachel’s multiple obsessive addictions, I would have preferred a slightly less shrill delivery at times, particularly as she was ever present on the stage, although I have to say that it was most effective when interacting with poor Tom, ever calm and solicitous.
I almost wish I had not read Paula Hawkins’ novel all those years ago, because, as already mentioned, although this new production retains most of the characters and stays on track (no pun intended) with the plot, it has been adapted as an alternative version which, for me, lacks some depth and consequently doesn’t always hit the spot. The play presents as less of a psychological thriller, more of a straight whodunit. Nevertheless, it’s an extremely enjoyable night out, especially if you are coming to it fresh. The action keeps you guessing from the beginning, building to a stunning conclusion with quite the best special effect I’ve lately seen!
Reviewer: Gill Ranson
2 hours 20 minutes including interval
Touring