“Dad?” Six-year-old Aggie eyes me with a doubtful look. “Is Justin going to be funny?” I must admit I’ve been thinking the same thing. We’re en route to see Justin Fletcher, CBeebies’ resident jester, star in The Railway Children, the tear-jerking classic about poverty, political refugees and the power of red petticoats. Fletcher has just joined the cast of York Theatre Royal’s runaway success of a show, which opened at the National Railway Museum in York in 2008, pulled into London’s Waterloo Station and is now into its final months at a theatre behind King’s Cross with a stage built around a length of real train track.
Justin – I’ve tried, but simply can’t continue calling him Fletcher – is one of Aggie’s TV heroes, alongside Gem from Swashbuckle and Nina of “and the Neurons” fame. She likes his show Gigglebiz, with its cast of characters named with groan-worthy puns (such as Ann Teak, the hapless antiques expert); we enjoyed the televised Tale of Mr Tumble, staged at Manchester international festival last year; and she adores the ear-splitting Justin’s House, performed to a packed studio with row after row of raucous kids who scream, dance and sing along as Justin holds court.
While I know Aggie would like to see him perform on stage as Mr Tumble, I’m not sure how she’ll take to Justin playing Mr Perks, the station porter portrayed in the 1970 film adaptation by Bernard Cribbins – now one of Justin’s CBeebies stablemates. Last year, the comedian Sean Hughes had a stint as Perks in the production; he has an air of melancholia that certainly suits the character. But while Justin shows a calmer side in Something Special, kids primarily know him as the endlessly ebullient star of his own shows – will they be happy to see him in a more subdued role?
“I think he’s going to stop it being sad,” decides Aggie, who enjoys waving at Justin and the rest of the cast as they do an informal bit of meeting and greeting before the show begins. We’ve already admired the foyer, decked out with an Edwardian railway saloon bar and piles of battered suitcases. In the theatre itself, the audience is split in two by a long, narrow stage – principally used as a platform, but cleverly designed (by Joanna Scotcher) with movable sections that are pushed by stagehands who seem to double as rail workers. The show, directed by Damian Cruden, proves as sophisticated in its storytelling as its stagecraft.
The Railway Children is the longest, and most grownup, film that Aggie has watched and she’s enjoyed a young readers’ version of E Nesbit’s original book, so already knows the story of the three children who relocate to the Yorkshire countryside with their mother and struggle to make ends meet after their father is mysteriously taken away. It’s framed here by adapter Mike Kenny as a memory play: the central trio, Bobbie, Peter and Phyllis, appear first as adult characters, looking back at the events, before the same actors make the slightest of costume adjustments to become children again. Throughout the course of the play, they intermittently resume the role of adult narrators. Aggie likes the way they are telling their own story – and while none of this young audience really knows what the “fourth wall” is, Kenny knows how much fun it can be for kids when it’s broken to bits. We’re told to imagine events they can’t stage and look away from painful episodes, then we’re sent off to recuperate with an interval ice-cream after Bobbie faints on the track.
As a big sister herself, Aggie’s favourite character in the book is Bobbie – played brilliantly here by Sophie Ablett – but she especially enjoys Beth Lilly’s spirited performance as Phyllis. Kenny potently explores the essence of community but particularly brings out that childhood muddle of making sense of grownups’ coded world, and highlights the children’s hope, bravery and resourcefulness as they stay strong while the cracks appear in their family life. Along the way, composer Christopher Madin’s score is rightfully wistful rather than sentimental.
So what of Justin? Early on, he has a well-judged routine in which he strides in slow motion alongside the children’s carriage, employing a handful of regional accents to play various station masters, conveying their journey north to Yorkshire. In the interval, he balances a broom on his chin and gets whoops of approval from Aggie and the rest of the audience. But it’s not an outsized performance and, suiting the play’s theme, is part of a harmonious ensemble. And, to the children’s delight, it turns out that the show-stealing turn comes from a real steam locomotive, built in the 1890s, whose appearances are genuinely moving.
- Justin Fletcher stars in The Railway Children, at King’s Cross theatre, until 30 October. The play runs until 8 January 2017.
