Review: The Railway Children, King’s Cross Theatre

While Google dawdle over plans for their futuristic £650m London HQ, they’ve allowed a touch of Edwardian era magic to be evoked daily on their site, nestled alongside King’s Cross station’s mainline.

And for a gloriously indulgent journey into steam-powered nostalgia, via E Nesbit’s children’s classic, there couldn’t be a more appropriate and more romantic spot.

Against the sweeping, twisting iron lattice of modern-day King’s Cross station, and in the shadow of the restored Granary Building, audiences are invited to step inside a thoroughly Edwardian railway waiting room. It’s all wood panels, grand travel posters and atmospheric shunting soundtrack. The kids are enthralled.

Shortly after, we make our way past stacks of leather suitcases into the purpose-built auditorium – a mercifully temperate tent – where much of the stage is swept in and out of view on a central set of rail tracks.

This choreographed route to our seats is a vanilla immersive theatre experience, with a touch of Disney, sprinkled with the fondly remembered clenched emotions of period English storytelling. The cast of the play greet their audience, ten rows of a hundred people lined either side of the tracks, and remind us to wave at the train. And with a jolly atmosphere duly created among the families, let alone the large contingent of adult groups too, we’re off.

The play rattles along at a decent pace, coping – as is often the case with adaptations of beloved novels – with having to rip through plenty of mild peril and emotional turmoil in a short couple of hours.

Early scenes handle the dated absurdity of a life growing up with legions of butlers, gently sending the whole thing all up. Unlike the famous black and white weepy movie, here the three children of the family are played by grown-ups and via the device of reminiscence.

But it’s easy enough to be convinced by their child-like enthusiasms and quarrels. And there are plenty of real kids on stage too, sourced from local Camden schools (in fact, they are looking for more young cast members on the 7th and 14th of March, see details below if your little ’uns dream of being up there in the spotlights).

As the children’s father is wrongly imprisoned and they are forced to downsize to Yorkshire, the charm of the theatre’s pop-up location really comes into its own. Judging by the accents, a fair chunk of the audience seem to have travelled from up that way, (the original production debuted in York, before popular stints at Waterloo and in Toronto) just to see just the play return. It couldn’t be easier to arrive here by train, step straight into a night at the London theatre and still be home in a bed on the moors at a decent hour.

In fact, modern day King’s Cross station is so nearby, the occasional faint platform PA announcement drifts incongruously into one or two of the Edwardian vignettes.

But that’s ok: with a stripped back stage for the non-railway scenes, we quickly become used to using our imaginations for various the cottages and townhouses, and even for the earlier instances of trains, where dry ice ‘steam’ shoots along the auditorium for the children to frantically wave their hankies towards.

But there’s no need for brain-power once the star of the show does thunder into view. The full-size steam train elicits euphoric cheers from the adults, plus exciting wriggling and flag-waving from the younger ones.

Later on, my daughters enjoy the dank, atmospheric tunnel scene for its slightly scary edge, and I struggle with a lump in the throat at Bobbie reuniting with her father, the famous platform exclamation “Daddy, my daddy!” tugging the heartstrings by slathering on the sentimentality.

My girls were excited to see that the run has been extended to September, with affable stand-up Sean Hughes taking over the role of Mr. Perks the stationmaster, too. So I think it’s assured we’ll be making a return journey back to wave at Bobbie and family, full steam ahead.