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Review: Railway Children (September 2007)

Kids stay on track for delightful railway show

AS a group, the BATS have never been afraid of trying something new - whether it comes off or not. The risk in this case was giving local young actors their head in a play heavily reliant on its cast of children. Happily it turned out to be no risk at all, as the BATS attracted the sort of large opening night crowd not usual­ly associated with amateur dramatics.

hether that was to do with the choice of play, the slick PR operation put in to place for this production or the support of the cast's friends and family is difficult to say. Supporters of the BATS settled for 'a bit of all of them', but what wasn't open to debate was the entertaining nature of the production. Fears the youngsters would look out of their depth were soon allayed with confident and mature performances from the off.

Tessa Carrick, Tom Wood and Tessa Patterson led the company superbly as Railway children Roberta, Peter and Phyllis. They were ably supported by the talented William Cousins, Christopher Allchin, Sean Coughlan, Holly Hallam, Lauren Gander, Abbie Neary, Tomas Stoneham, William Whybrow and Joshua King as the Perks children. The adults shone, too. Mike Stoneham was superb for the most part as key character and narrator, Perks. Dee Sharpe was a very convincing Mother and Paul Le Sueur was utterly believable as the kindly 'Old Gentleman'. Solid turns came too from John Brown, Nikki Braybrook, lan Hallam, Jay Aubrey and Marcia Linden.

Personally, I'm not sure E Nesbit's book adapts for the stage all that well. Trains aren't exactly an every­day prop and at times it proved diffi­cult to achieve a sense of excitement or peril as a result. That said, excellent images for back-projection, provided by train expert and artist Matthew Cousins and others, mitigated the problem and ensured the production wasn't in danger of hitting the buffers on tech­nical grounds.

Director Peter Bradbury recognised the play would be a challenge and break new ground for the group. He deserves credit for taking the plunge and not being scared to face those challenges. He and his team deserve further praise for overcoming them and putting on a thoroughly watchable production.

- DC, Bexhill Observer

Review reproduced by permission