All Aboard the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway For This New Production of The Railway Children
This summer audiences are invited to see The Railway Children like they've never seen it before - on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, where the original 1970 film was shot
Bradford 2025, York Theatre Royal and Keighley and Worth Valley Railway have teamed up to bring this Olivier Award-winning stage production of The Railway Children, which has been reworked especially for Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, to Bradford.
Director Damian Cruden trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and has worked at various regional theatres around the county including Hull Truck Theatre and York Theatre Royal. ‘I started out doing a lot of youth theatre work so I’ve always been keen on giving young people opportunity. I’ve also been engaging with the community aspects of theatre,’ he says. ‘I grew up around theatre that wasn’t necessarily in [conventional] theatre spaces, and when I started at York Theatre Royal, in my interview I said “I’d quite like to do a version of The Railway Children at the National Railway Museum with a real train”, at the time not really working out what that actually meant in terms of the consequences of what I was suggesting,’ he laughs. ‘It was the notion of using a real train as an iconic object in a piece of theatre, and the engineering and staging challenges around that, that were exciting and interesting.’
This stage adaptation enchanted audiences when it premiered in 2008, when a steam locomotive added to the theatrics by chuffing into a specially-constructed space at the National Railway Museum. ‘The first time we did it, we had to learn what was possible and what wasn’t, and interestingly because we were working with the National Railway Museum in York there was a whole thing about how a theatre company works with a museum and the railway industry – a three-part mix,’ Damian explains. ‘Actually it took two and a half years from the first conversations about it to actually getting it into the space. Most of these big projects are about partnerships and how you bring people who have no theatrical experience or understanding into a theatrical world, and how we adapt to the partners. It’s a process that requires a lot of careful planning and flexibility around the needs of the different organisations that are involved in it.’
Since then, the adaptation has been adapted again for more unusual spaces, including a 1,000-seat, state-of-the-art theatre adjacent to Toronto’s historic Roundhouse Park with a 60-tonne vintage steam locomotive. ‘When we did it in Toronto, we couldn’t find a British locomotive so we shipped a National Railway Museum locomotive to Canada and back,’ says Damian. ‘Every time we do it, there’s a different set of issues that arise that you have to adapt the piece to work with. It’s not a case of picking up and moving it. Every venue has a different set of peculiarities so you’re always re-defining the mechanics of it. What we try to do though is keep the performance value and the production as close to the original as we can.’
Based on the classic children’s book by E. Nesbit (which tells the story of three children forced to move from London to Yorkshire after their father is falsely imprisoned), the theatre show will take place on the historic Keighley and Worth Valley Railway for the first time. Audiences will begin by taking a steam train from Keighley, with an immersive soundscape along the journey, before watching the performance in an adapted engine shed at Oxenhope station. A purpose-built auditorium will seat the audience on either side of a train track.‘We’re going into a smaller space so the audience size has dropped from 1,000 to 500 per performance, and we’ve lost a little bit of space in the performing area. It’s also different because it’s in a location that’s not easily accessible by car but very accessible by train. In some ways, the experience of being part of the performance starts a bit earlier when audiences get on the train to come up the line from Keighley. I’m sure we’ll discover lots more in the coming weeks that we’ll need to be flexible about and find ways to work around to make it a really fun experience for the audience. There’s things that will change how we think about the piece because it’s got a slightly different engagement span for the audience.’
Stand & Be Counted Theatre, the UK’s first Theatre Company of Sanctuary, are working with people seeking sanctuary to create a scene-setting audio experience for the audience as they journey to the show. ‘We have looked at the dynamics of casting. We have a British-Asian family at the centre of it,’ Damian says. ‘I think the play has always been about how people accept strangers into the heart of their communities and that’s not about tolerating people, it’s about accepting people. The story is very much still about if you accept people without judgement and choose to see the person rather than what’s around them, as a community and individuals you benefit on both sides hugely by that ability to share something. Of course that manifests itself in the story. The children save the train, they save the boy in the tunnel, they help the Russian who comes looking for his family – there’s all these things that they do which ask the local community to open up to them. The whole piece has an energy of giving and receiving and you have this ongoing process of sharing which is really what any good society is about – that we all live together and that we need to find a way to work with each other regardless of who we may be, wherever we may come from. The whole thing is about finding a way to co-exist and accept each other. It’s hugely moving but more than that it’s a celebration of the power of women and their voices, of children and their voices and the power of a community to stand on its own two feet to be open and welcoming.’
As a key part of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture’s special events, Damian is feeling positive about the city’s future.
‘My feeling would be that, with a heritage that’s left by a cultural festival like this one, this should give Bradford a really open future in terms of its cultural events and language in a way that it’s maybe not done up until now. There’s the museums, cinemas, The Alhambra Theatre – it’s phenomenally well facilitated in terms of spaces and opportunities to present and show work, and it sits in beautiful countryside. You’re minutes away from glorious rural landscapes. In one way that’s one of the nice things about this particular project – that it’s allowing people to come out of the city and into that. The railway line becomes a lovely link from the built-up areas to a space with a sense of peace and tranquility.’
