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The Girl on the Train

Theatre Royal, Glasgow

Four stars

 

Life is a series of bad dreams for Rachel Watson, the woman at the heart of this chic looking adaptation of Paula Hawkins’s smash hit 2015 novel, stopping off in Glasgow this week as part of its latest tour. 

 

The mess Rachel has seemingly created for herself is a rush hour of arrivals and departures, in which her drinking blacks out everything she thinks she knows. Her husband Tom has long left her for his new bride Anna and their firstborn, and the only thing she has going for her is the daily commute to London. 

 

Now Rachel has been sacked from her job, the journey allows her to spy on Tom and Anna’s neighbours, about whom she concocts her own imagined story to fill the void. As reality bites, the truth of what is really going on beyond the train carriage window with the couple who are actually named Scott and Megan is considerably stranger than any fiction Rachel can concoct. 

 

As Rachel navigates her way between Tom, Anna, Scott and Megan, as well as therapist Kamal, she gets a return journey more than she bargained for as she struggles to get her life back on track. 

 

With Rachel’s off-the-rails state captured by a fearless Giovanni Fletcher, the millions of fans of both Hawkins’ book and the 2016 film version will already know how things work out for her. Betrayal, infidelity, gaslighting and murder are all in the mix before the women on board take charge. 

 

To say the men don’t come out well in Loveday Ingram’s production of Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel’s adaptation is an understatement, from Samuel Collings’ needy Scott and Jason Merrells’ slimy Tom, to Daniel Burke’s calculating Kamal. Only Paul McEwan’s DI Gaskell isn’t pulling some kind of number on Rachel as she stumbles her way to enlightenment on Adam Wiltshire’s ice cool light box based set.  Enhanced by Dan Light’s video work, this resembles a state of art gallery installation. 

 

There is something going on here too about women and babies both living and unborn, as Rachel, Zena Carswell’s Anna and Natalie Dunne’s Megan find some kind of sisterly solidarity beyond what has happened to them. When revenge comes, Rachel may have survived, but there is blood on the tracks that will be hard to wipe clean in this dark thriller that comes with hidden depths.


The Herald, January 31st 2025

 

Ends 

 

 

 

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