Writers: Yojiro Ichikawa and Eden Tredwell
Composer: Eden Tredwell
Director: Yojiro Ichikawa
Being stuck on a train going nowhere for eternity may be a familiar feeling for many commuters but Yojiro Ichikawa and Eden Tredwell’s new musical has a far more romantic proposition in mind. Galaxy Train is a dramatisation of Kenji Miyazawa’s 1920s novel Night at the Galactic Railroad and makes its English language premiere at The Other Palace as a semi-stage concert performance. A story of loneliness, grief and underdog hope, some lovely staging choices and excellent vocal performances get this work-in-progress on its way.
Bullied by some local boys for being poor and fatherless, Giovanni must work in a local factory after school to earn extra money to help his mother even if it means missing the annual Milky Way Festival. Stopping by on his way home, an altercation suddenly takes him to another plain and Giovanni wakes up on the Galaxy Train with a number of passengers all looking for something or someone. When his friend Campanella arrives too, a magical journey begins.
Galaxy Train has quite a dark subject matter, focusing particularly on grief, the loss of a parent and notions of self-sacrifice that manifest through spiritual interactions. It is structured largely around the stories of the people on the train, cutting back in time to re-enact their final or most important memories before they arrive at their stop. The connecting theme is about giving up something for the benefit of others and with flashbacks to the Titanic as well as a young Campanella’s wistful relationship with his mother, it means a great deal of this 95-minute musical is quite tragic or focused on catastrophe.
Eden Tredwell’s composition as a result is often in a minor key, played on a melancholy piano arranged by Gus Tredwell that doesn’t have quite enough light and shade. Galaxy Train is often mawkish about love and goodness, making character presentations either black and white, good or bad where some shades of grey would lighten the earnest sentimentality. One moment of levity at the Milky Way festival has a beautiful community song, a happy number with very slight Japanese tones in the music that feels ready for a bigger staging filled with the colour and life of the townsfolk gathered by the water. Beyond this, it is mostly depressed solos and perhaps there is space for the cast to work together more.
The book and lyrics are a little stilted, possibly a translation from the original text but lines like “say I’m not a madman on a hill screaming for answers from stars”, feels a little clunky. Musical theatre is obsessed with the romanticism of the stars, the possibility that they represent the departed and their symbolism of eternity; Galaxy Train ticks all of these boxes. But it is beautifully staged in the tiny studio of The Other Palace and designer Lorelei Cairns creates a printed backdrop and a choreographed collection of coloured lights that the cast use to great effect.
The company are singers first so occasionally the acting is a little mannered, but this is their first performance and there are some excellent vocal contributions, particularly from Misato Higashijima as Campanella, an operatic Saori Oda as his mother and Sinéad Wall as the train guard. Galaxy Train ultimately needs to decide how fantastical it wants to be and then feed that through the rest of the representation, drawing more of its style from the Japanese tradition than standard musical theatre which might just give it the lightness it needs.
Runs until 26 March 2023
The Reviews Hub Score:
Tragic and sentimental
