The Railway Children Reviews

Wednesday, 8th Sep 2010 by eja

We went to see The Railway Children at Waterloo in August. The acting was superb but we were disappointed in a number of ways, my son particularly, which was such a shame after he had been looking forward to it for so long.

Firstly, despite arriving 30mins before the start time, there were large queues at the entrance –resulted 20mins queuing and then be rushed through straight to the theatre – no time for a leisurely refreshment as planned.

In the theatre – the leg room is appalling, I am not tall at all – but every time the person infront leant back in their chair it really hurt my knees!

The first half is very long – 1 hour and 10mins – far too long! Despite being marketed at children, the show’s creators seemed to be confused as to whether this is targeted at children or adults – the first half is really targeted at adults, despite getting the audience warmed at the start with a Mexican wave, the rest of the first half is really for adults or children over 8 years old for them to be able to follow the storyline.. The show is heavily marketed as featuring a real steam train – this was our real disappointment – during the first half – I think we counted 8 occasions (may have been more) when the train was going up and down the track – BUT it wasn’t actually there, we had to use our imaginations – which produced many exclamations of ‘where’s the train?’ ‘the train isn’t there is it?’ from our son. Doing this a couple of times would be ok but it was far too much and all the young children were getting very despondent, and the adults too – having paid significant amounts of money to see a production featuring a steam train. Towards the end of the first half a number of children were having to go out to use the toilet including our little one and simply could not wait. We were told by the stewards (again in military style fashion) that we were not allowed back into the theatre until after the interval so as not to disrupt the scene. We then discovered that the particular scene was the one where the train makes its appearance for the first time! Children were distraught – why we could not have just stood in the entrance to see the train I have no idea – but they were not allowed back in to see the one moment they had been waiting for. Overall, first half too long, difficult to follow storyline for children and no train – resulting in my son actually asking to go home!!

The second half was much better – shorter and did feature the steam train more. At the end we were disappointed that the train was not brought fully onto the set – that would have been a wonderful ending and very fitting after the cast had waved their goodbyes. We were also disappointed (along with many others) that we were unable to take a photo of the train (just the front that we could see), even though the production had ended, lights were up and all the actors had departed.

Onto the programme – no list of scenes, and surprisingly the biography for one of the main characters (listed first in the cast list) ‘Roberta’ was right at the end of all the biographies – seemed to be a short afterthought – the other cast members bios are in alphabetical order – hers is not, I expect she is very disappointed by her bio and its place in the programme. The interview with the writer is interesting – in that it asks how he writes for children – apparently ‘he lets the audience use their imagination as much as possible’ – fine for the book, but for the theatre – we paid for the tickets to see a stage interpretation of the story, not to sit in cramped seats and imagine it!

Souvenirs were vastly overpriced – for example a train whistle cost £7! Foyer area seemed to be big advertising campaign for Yorkshire.

On our way out, we found, next to the box office, a large sign to the Yorkshire Model Railway – which again produced exclamations of ‘where’s the train?’ from our son – that was the last straw for him - a model railway with no train…he was more impressed with the ride home on South West Trains.

Wednesday, 7th Jul 2010 by dgov

We saw the first preview performance of this show. It is a great production that was equally enjoyable for myself and my wife as well as our kids. The use of the platforms and tracks at waterloo station makes the production magical and we would highly recommend it, particularly to those with kids aged 5/6 plus.