SCHOOL THEATRE REVIEW: The Railway Children - The Grange Theatre, Hartford. Northwich.

The Grange School is one of the luckiest schools in the area.. it has to be, if only for the fact that they have a superb, adaptable, and fully-equipped professional theatre within their grounds which they can call their own! I would have given my right arm for such a theatre when I was at school!

Not only that, but as a patron you are always ensured of a friendly and warm welcome, and (an added bonus for those travelling long distances like me), there is a large, free car park too!

However, let's get back to the play. 'The Railway Children' by E. Nesbit, tells the story of (in a nutshell) three London-educated well-to-do children and their mother, who due to circumstances - mostly because their father is absent - having to leave their comfortable existence and travel to the "wilds" of Yorkshire to a small cottage. Life is very different here for the children, but they make friends easily and become the 'do-gooders' of the neighbourhood. They are fascinated by the steam trains and spend much time on the station platforms waving at the passengers (well, one passenger in particular), and that is where the story becomes much more of a politcial mystery thriller, so I'll stop there!

Performed by a mammoth cast of 59 school students from the Lower School (11 - 15 year olds I have been told), this would have been a daunting task for even the most hardened of professionals to tackle, but two of the school's drama teachers, Jacqueline Hardy-Kinsella and Bethan McCormick, took gauntlet in hand, managing somehow to make the play flow seamlessly, and allow every student who wanted to speak the opportunity of doing so. They did this by sensibly creating four separate parts to the story, allowing many more of the young cast to play principal roles by casting each part with different children. I thought this might have been a little confusing, especially for an "outsider" like myself, but actually it worked excellently, and all credit to the whole team, since we never for one moment needed to ask who was who!

Perhaps even more impressive was the staging and technical aspects of the show. A split-level stage, with projections of a Victorian railway station and platform, as well as an authentic Victorian Pillar Box, road sign and railway point controls formed the basis, whilst projections of the tunnel and light / sound for the oncoming train was both imaginative and realistic. The 'Three Chimneys' interior was a pull-out section of the central flats. 

In all other aspects bar the directing, this was a student-led production, with prompt, backstage crew, and even FOH staff being the students too. What a brilliant start in life these youngsters are enjoying! It seems inevitable I suppose, and I know I really oughtn't contrast and compare with my own schoolhood, simply because there isn't any comparison! These fortunate youngsters are learning many important skills which will last them their lifetimes in a professional environment. [no, I am not jealous.......!! a-hem!]

'The Railway Children', in this adaptation by Dave Simpson, is a two-hour drama. Keeping the original settings, it is a wordy, Victorian story, which must have seemed a million light years away from the students' own contemporary lifestyles. Dressed in contemporaneous garb, and having to act and speak in a very different way from the way children act and speak nowadays, was a tall order I imagine. Not only that, but there had to be a marked difference between the RP speech of the Waterburys and the Yorkshire brogue of the locals.

It would be absolutely impossible to try and mention anyone of the cast by name here.. suffice to say that it was abundantly clear that everyone on stage was giving 100% to their roles; they all had a very clear understanding of their roles and how they fit in to the story in general, and they were all enjoying every second of it too. As I have previoiusly mentioned, this is not an easy play to pull off - not by anyone, let alone young teenagers - and I was extremely impressed by the standard, the commitment, and the overall experience.

I do have one criticism however. Sadly I missed a lot of the dialogue, as did my companion and others seated around me. Mostly this was due to microphones not being set high enough I should imagine, but it was a real shame. Fortunately I knew the storyline and was able to follow it easily, but hopefully this minor detail can be rectified for future performances. 

Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 23.6.22