FOR all its psychological trappings, this is at heart a true whodunit thriller, as five characters have reason and motive to be the killer. In true Agatha Christie style, all the clues and red herrings are laid out before us, leading us down one false trail after another. The big difference in this skilful stage adaptation of the highly successful Paula Hawkins novel and Dreamworks film, is that the story is presented through the confused alcohol-fuelled mind of Rachel – a place where fantasy and reality go hand in hand.
A failed marriage, inability to have children and the loss of her job have led Rachel into a more-and-more introverted life, in which she still travels by train each day to a non-existing job. As the train stops at signals beside the same block of flats, she begins to believe that she knows the people she sees through the train window. So real do they become that when Megan (Natalie Dunne) and Scott (Samuel Collings) – in Rachel’s eyes the ideal couple she wishes she and her ex-husband Tom (Jason Merrells) had been – are seen having an altercation, and then Megan disappears, Rachel is convinced harm has been done to her.
After failing to convince laconic overworked DI Gaskill (Paul McEwan), she sets out to unravel the puzzle herself, separating fact from fiction in her muddled brain. In doing so she meets Scott, discovers that Tom and his new wife Anna (Zena Carswell) are neighbours, and meets Megan’s analyst Kamal Abdic (Daniel Burke). When Megan’s brutally murdered body is discovered in an underpass, with Rachel suffering from a head wound nearby, reality kicks violently in, with the realisation that any one of the five could be the murderer.
Rather than just rely on words, director Loveday Ingram, set and costume designer Adam Wiltshire and lighting and sound designers Jack Knowles and Elizabeth Purnell produce a series off flashback scenes that help to unravel the twisted skeins of the story. Add in Dan Light’s video designs, making you feel that you are not only ON the train with Rachel, but at times within a desperately confused mind struggling to find reality, and your whodunit becomes a psychological thriller.
All of these effects and fine characterisations would count for naught if we could not believe that Rachel was someone desperately trying to fight her way back to the surface from the slough of despond, and in doing so finding justice for Megan, even if she proves to be the guilty one. It’s a big ask to play someone who may or may not be on the verge of a mental breakdown, or is it all faked to conceal evil? Giovanna Fletcher proves to be more than just up to the task, moving from the dexterity of a gazelle to the determined power of a tiger in the blink of an eye.
As for who dunit, you will have to go to the Theatre Royal, Bath to discover that or wait until the production returns to the area between 25th and 29th March at the Everyman Theatre Cheltenham.
GRP
Photographs by Pamela Wraith