The Girl on the Train is one of those books that’s easy to imagine as a film, but harder to see how it would make a good theatre production. Luckily Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel have done a cracking job with their adaptation which kicked off a UK-wide tour at Richmond Theatre last week.
Right from the start you’re inside the world and confused mind of the main protagonist Rachel Watson, with her commuter train journey represented by clever graphics and a shifting group of standing passengers. The Girl on the Train story centres on Rachel, her obsession with a couple she watches as her train passes their home and her attempts to unravel a crime she may have witnessed, or even committed.
In The Girl on the Train tour, Rachel is played by Giovanna Fletcher for the first couple of months. After that the role will be taken over by Eastenders’ Louisa Lytton and then Laura Whitmore. So there’s a theme of using well-known names to bring in the punters, but Giovanna does a good job of conveying her character lurching between bouts of drunkenness, paranoia and investigation.
If you haven’t read The Girl on the Train book or seen the 2016 film version with Emily Blunt, it’s a tense mystery that keeps you guessing and the theatre staging is cleverly done to achieve that. The lighting changes to switch between flashbacks and reality, video is used to great effect and the set changes are minimal but cleverly done to clearly indicate which location the action has moved to.
If there’s a drinks cabinet on the stage you know you’re in the home of Scott, husband of the missing woman Megan. When a mattress appears you know you’re back in Rachel’s bedsit. A chair signals the office of psychiatrist Kamal, while a rug on the floor places you at Tom’s house.
Tom is Rachel’s ex-husband who lives a few doors away from Scott and Megan with his new wife Anna and their baby. Hence Rachel’s initial interest in observing what goes on in this particular street. But her observations are far from reliable and the people and relationships involved aren’t all what they seem. In parallel with a detective assigned to Megan’s disappearance, Rachel slowly starts to put the pieces together and the tension rises all the way to the play’s dramatic climate.
I had seen the film, but couldn’t 100% remember how it all played out so I was gripped until the end. But even if you’ve read the book or seen the film, it’s a theatre adaptation that is well worth seeing.
The Girl on the Train tour is at theatres across the UK and Ireland until the end of August 2025.
For more theatre reviews visit the Arts section of my blog.
I enjoyed the book and the film. The play sounds wonderful!
Excellent, hopefully it’s coming to a theatre near you!