Theatre This article is more than 8 years oldThe Ghost Train – all aboard for the world’s scariest play
This article is more than 8 years oldTwo new productions of Arnold Ridley’s drama about travellers stuck in a haunted railway station prove this 1923 comedy thriller hasn’t run out of steam
What is the greatest stage ghost story of all time? Most people’s vote might go to The Woman in Black; though even old potboilers such as Gaslight can be quite chilling when the lights begin to flicker, and Conor McPherson’s supernatural dramas generate a genuine frisson.
My choice, however, would have to be The Ghost Train, a comedy thriller written in 1923 by Arnold Ridley, who is less well-known as a playwright than as Private Godfrey, the most senior member of the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard. Before Dad’s Army made the catchphrase “may I be excused sir?” famous, Ridley wrote more than 30 plays, of which only The Ghost Train achieved notable success, running for 665 performances at St Martin’s theatre and being adapted for the cinema three times.
Ridley’s story of a group of travellers stranded for the night in a remote Cornish station was inspired by his own experience of a missed connection, while employed as an actor with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre Company. In his autobiography, he recalled an uncomfortable night spent at Mangotsfield Junction, near Bristol: “It was just about as lonely and gloomy a dump as one could imagine … I was awoken by a Bristol-Birmingham express rip-roaring by with a flash of lights and a scream of whistle.” It gave him an idea: “Passengers stranded on a lonely station haunted by the shades of other passengers killed in a smash. Why not the ghost of the train itself?”
I was first taken to see The Ghost Train at the age of seven, and have been recovering from the experience ever since. It was a repertory production at York Theatre Royal, featuring Berwick Kaler (who subsequently became the theatre’s long-standing pantomime dame). Though I remember it as being funny, the old stationmaster’s prophecy (“Some nights, the signal bell rings and the train comes a-screaming and a-tearing through”), not to mention the sound and light effects that accompanied it, were absolutely terrifying. So much so that I demanded to be taken and terrified again the next night, and once more at the Saturday matinee.
Since then, I make it a point never to miss revivals of this old-fashioned but superbly effective play. Memorable re-encounters have included a starry mid-90s production at the Lyric Hammersmith in which the old station master was played by Bill Oddie; and a postmodern version at Bolton Octagon directed by Lawrence Till that lifted the lid on the incredible sound effects (of which more later). Yet it could be that Ghost Train spotters are living through a golden age: as not only have Told By An Idiot embarked on a radical revision at the Royal Exchange theatre, Manchester, there is an old-school staging by Talking Scarlet steaming round the country with a cast led by Hi-de-Hi! star Jeffrey Holland.
Few actors are better versed in Ghost Train lore than Holland, who has appeared in four different productions, and worked alongside Arnold Ridley in a stage version of Dad’s Army. The current stop of the tour, at Coventry’s Belgrade theatre, stirs up particular memories: “The last time I did this play here was in rep in 1974,” he says. “Arnold was sitting in the stalls, alongside Arthur Lowe. It was his only great success as a playwright and he was very proud of it. He told me that when it opened, he overheard two London impresarios comparing notes during the first interval. One of them said: ‘Mark my words, this will be closed by Saturday.’ Yet here we are, 90 years later.”
What does he believe to be the secret of the play’s endurance? “It stands up because it is so brilliantly constructed,” Holland says. “Arnold was absolutely adamant that it had to be played straight. Each time you see the dead stationmaster’s red light swinging and hear the bell ringing in the distance, it still gives me a shiver even today.”
So what is it that makes The Ghost Train so scary? It’s partly the low-tech approach, since inherited by The Woman In Black, whereby a spontaneously opening door or slamming ticket hatch is sufficient to make an audience jump out of its skin. But the true star is the terrifying apparition of the train itself. As the Manchester Guardian’s critic at the first performance observed: “The gentleman in charge of ‘noises off’ becomes at times the protagonist … He can make a sound so like a train it might impinge on the nearest terminus.”
Ridley was specific about how this effect should be produced. At the back of the acting edition of the script is a list of equipment required to simulate a banshee express. It includes a garden roller “propelled over fence struts 30 inches apart”, an 18-gallon galvanised tank, an E-flat bell, an auctioneer’s hammer and, most importantly for that blood-curdling wail, “three air cylinders, available from British Oxygen Co, Wembley, or local agent”.
“It’s so theatrical, it seems a real pity that Ridley intended all this to be kept off stage and out of sight” says Paul Hunter, director of the Royal Exchange production. “But then, he would probably have had a heart attack to think of his play being done, as we are doing it, in the round.”
Hunter’s company, Told By An Idiot, is more closely associated with genre-defying devised work than rackety repertory scripts. But his obsession with The Ghost Train began when he saw a village amateur dramatic production directed by his father-in-law. “It instantly struck me what an incredibly well-plotted work it is: scary, but with that madcap element that reminded me – and I mean this as the highest possible compliment – of an episode of Scooby-Doo!”
As well as the visible locomotive-orchestra, there are other aspects of Hunter’s production that would probably also have perturbed Ridley. Holland recalls an Old Vic production in which Wilfred Brambell played the stationmaster for laughs, prompting the author to wail: “You’ve ruined my play!” One wonders what he would have made of an elderly spinster played by a Spanish actor in drag, or of the appearance of a woman dressed as a parrot. But despite the touches of visual anarchy, Told By An Idiot’s version is still recognisably the brilliantly funny thriller that occurred to Ridley one cold and lonely night in 1923. Mangotsfield Junction may have long since disappeared from the network, but The Ghost Train shows no sign of running out of steam.
Told By An Idiot’s version of The Ghost Train is at the Royal Exchange theatre, Manchester, until 20 June. Box office: 0161-833 9833. The Talking Scarlet touring production is at Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, from 1-6 June. Box office: 01483 440 000.
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