A tense train trip with many twists and turns
EastEnders legend Samantha Womack is playing opposite Coronation Street actor Oliver Farnworth in the stage version of The Girl On The Train in Birmingham next week
playing the prince charming, nice guy, boyfriend-next-door sort of thing. I like roles that have a bit of meat and a bit of weight to them.”
Also in the cast are John Dougall as Detective Inspector Gaskill, who is investigating Megan’s disappearance, as well as Kirsty Oswald as Megan herself. Adam Jackson-Smith plays Rachel’s ex-husband Tom, Lowenna Melrose is his new wife Anna and Naeem Hayatt is Kamal, a therapist who may or may not have been having an affair with Megan.
It’s a tangled web they all weave, with Oliver pointing out : “All the characters in the play are multi-faceted and complex and it’s not a goody/baddie story. All the characters are slightly flawed and that makes for interesting, exciting drama.”
Anthony, meanwhile, feels even audiences familiar with the novel will be surprised by The Girl On The Train on stage. They haven’t changed key plot points but in the book there are three character narratives - namely those of Megan, Anna and Rachel - while on stage Rachel is the focal point.
“In the novel,” he elaborates, “the way that facts are revealed and the sort of drip-drip of that is through three fragmented chronologies. Here it’s more simple, told across six chronological days, but the scenes withhold information from the audience in hopefully a similarly experiential way to how the novel withholds information from the reader. It’s the same story but the presentation is different.”
An expert in the genre, Anthony adds that theatre-goers are drawn to thrillers because they tap into our fascination with good and evil and a desire to know ‘whodunnit’. The specific hook with The Girl On The Train, he feels, is that it revolves around a anti-heroine. “And it’s fascinating for an audience to follow the journey of a protagonist like that.”
Samantha agrees. “There’s something about Rachel’s devil-may-care rebellion that appeals to lots of people. She says what you shouldn’t say, she thinks what you shouldn’t think, she’s a victim of circumstance and you have sympathy for her because of everything she’s been through.”
Anthony raves about his leading lady. “Samantha is outstanding and it’s a great collaboration because she is extremely thorough about understanding not only how her character works but also how all the characters and the whole concoction works.”
Rachel doesn’t leave the stage for the entire show. “And that terrifies me,” Samantha admits. “I don’t always take things in at first and it wasn’t until the middle of rehearsals that it hit me that ‘Oh, it’s basically just one long scene for me’. I never get to leave the stage and regroup. One scene leads me straight into another and it’s like a dance.”
Samantha, who came to fame as Mandy in the sitcom Game On and made her EastEnders debut in 2007, admits she misses her co-stars and crew. “I miss my EastEnders friends and family and they really are a family. You go through so much together – marriages, losses, births – and you become incredibly connected.”
Not being tied into a long-running soap allows her to do more theatre, although she confesses: “The unpredictability of my future is terrifying. Ten years ago when I went into EastEnders I was younger and you embrace the unknown. The older I get the scarier it is, although I’m learning to enjoy it again.”
Girl On A Train is at the Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham, for a week from Monday, August 26.