The Girl On The Train – Lowry, Salford

Writer: Paula Hawkins

Adaptor: Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel

Director: Loveday Ingram

A big literary hit in 2015, The Girl On The Train quickly progressed to film in 2016 and to the West End stage in 2019. Which all goes to prove that there’s no keeping a good story down. While there’s plenty of theatricality, visuals and sound wrapped around it, it’s the central story here, with all its twists and turns, that makes this an absorbing and entertaining production.

Since her recent divorce, Rachel’s life has taken a downward spiral. When not drinking to the point of blackout, she’s creating a fantasy life out of the people and things she sees around her. When a local woman is murdered, she is convinced she’s seen something that may lead to the killer, but is it all in her vivid imagination? As she gets herself more deeply involved with the victim’s friends and neighbours, she enters ever more dangerous territory.

While the book tells this chilling story of deception, threat and murder from the point of view of the three women, the play takes a more ensemble approach, revealing everyone’s weaknesses, uncovering motive after motive and keeping the final reveal well-hidden until the end. It’s a clever, winding tale that rakes up secrets, uncovers past wrongs and doesn’t avoid touching on some difficult subjects.

Giovanna Fletcher plays Rachel, a woman on the road to self-destruction, surrounded by chaos of her own making. Lounging about wrapped in a filthy duvet, drunk dialling her ex, Fletcher starts the play portraying a woman that’s difficult to pity. Her slow transformation throughout the next two hours is deftly done and it’s hard to know at what point you start to be on her side. She certainly has to deal with some less than lovely characters. Her ex-husband’s new wife Anna (Zena Carswell) is cold and resentful, the victim’s partner Scott (Samuel Collings) is nervy and easily provoked, her therapist Kamal (Daniel Burke) clearly has dark secrets. Just when Rachel most needs some friends, her path just keeps crossing people with something to hide. The character with the most compassion here is, rather unexpectedly, the policeman, DI Gaskill (Paul McEwan), who turns up at Rachel’s flat to ask a few questions about a missing woman. He’s perhaps the first person to show Rachel any kindness for some time. He’s creates moments of stillness amidst the play’s relentless nervous energy that is brilliantly delivered by the rest of the cast.

The momentum is kept up with some pacy direction and jarring visuals – projections and sharply designed lighting that abstractly portray the setting (the train carriage, Rachel’s flat, a creepy underpass) while also reflecting what’s going on in Rachel’s head. Clever bits of set, like a rotating box that Rachel gets trapped in like a hamster wheel, and an approaching train, are not overused and so have real impact when they are. Mostly the set is kept clean and uncluttered, focusing on the cast and the story.

This is a play with a pedigree, and while it’s a known quantity, this theatrical version still has something to add – even if you can remember who the killer turns out to be, having read the book ten years ago. Well adapted and solidly staged, it makes for an excellent night of dark entertainment.

Runs until 15 February 2025