The Girl On The Train - Tour / Duke Of York’s

I'm going when it comes to Brighton in June. I quite like the book but didn't think it worked in the film version because you quite clearly saw things that weren't clear in the book. I'll be interested how they manage it on stage.

Just got back from watching it tonight at the Liverpool Playhouse. Overall, a good play though I thought Act 1 was the weaker of the two parts and was a bit of a slog to get to the interval. Though Act 2 more than made up for it with plenty of tension and psychological drama from the characters.

I thought the staging of it on the small stage at the Playhouse was very effective in helping to get that tension and drama across to the audience. I don’t know if you would get that same feeling on a larger stage such as at the Salford Lowry where it will be playing shortly. The use of the special effects/VT for the train where well done. Though whoever was in charge of handling the smoke/dry ice machine in the theatre wings needs to be sacked. We were all choking in the stalls at the start of Act 2 with too much smoke/dry ice.

While it is a dark story, I’m glad there where a few humorous moments sprinkled into the plot just to lighten the mood. The detective at the start of Act 2 got some gallows humourous lines which where a nice touch.

Performance wise, there aren’t any weak links within the cast and Sam Womack as Rachel Watson gives a credible performance. Though I thought the performances were much stronger in Act 2 as the tone of the play shifts into more darker areas.

Worth a watch if you can get a cheap ticket.

Duke of York's seems to be getting all the shows at the moment. Yet still nothing for the Pinter.

Saw this tonight. It's average. Nice enough staging, strong sound design by the Ringham brothers and I thought Sam Womack was good. But very am-dram style acting from some of the cast let it down. It's fine as a 4 week filler but it's not really West End standard.

Agree with the above, this was an enjoyable enough couple of hours, but completely unremarkable. I can't help feeling it's a bit crappy that some of the actors are being recast for the West End run, especially as Oliver Farnworth is billed on the poster.

I've always found it weird that no matter how realisically it's presented people always seem to laugh at alcoholics. Must be awful for the actors.

I saw this last night and I thought it was a very enjoyable play.

The best bit for me was the way they staged it and used lighting to do the flashbacks in time. I was really sceptical first as I couldn't imagine how the book can be told on the stage but it was all very cleverly done.

I knew the story but other half didn't and he couldn't guess who's done it until the end.

If I can criticise it, it would be that the "bad" person didn't become menacing enough once they were "discovered" . I remember when I red the book the final parts were scary but on stage the bad person didn't fill me with dread.