00:00Good afternoon. My name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Lovely to speak again to Harry Atkinson, particularly as we are talking about The Ghost Train, which you're doing for the Wick Theatre Company, The Ghost Train. What a fantastic drama that is. And it's a drama that you've long admired, haven't you? What makes it such a great play, do you think, Harry?
00:23It's because of its structure. It keeps coming at you with something different, with something new. The basic scenario is a group of strangers are stranded in a remote Cornwall railway station in the middle of a thunderstorm.
00:43And one of the first things that happens is this very kind of like disingenuous station master who tells them that the station is haunted, which, of course, they don't believe.
00:57You know, they laugh this off. But things begin to happen which make them begin to wonder if it really is haunted.
01:06One of the first things that happened is that the station master, Saw Hodgkins, dies, falls dead in the doorway. And then more and more and more things begin to happen.
01:20I've got to be a little bit careful because I don't want to give away the ending to anybody who actually doesn't know the story.
01:27I don't want to give away nothing. But from your point of view as the director, what are the big challenges? What do you have to absolutely get right to make this really work? And the language is part of it, isn't it, obviously?
01:39Well, the language is certainly part of it. But once the cast became comfortable with it, during early stages of rehearsal, I used to get comments about, I would never say that. I would never say this like that.
01:51And I used to say, well, just go with it. You just have to take this. This was written in 1924, produced in 1925. People would talk to each other differently, partly because there was this difference between the way sex is related to each other, particularly in this very well-to-do middle-class society that these people come from.
02:15So that was one of the challenges. The other challenges is that the play demands pace, pace, pace, pace, because the narrative is unrelenting. It's always presenting you with the next thing, then the next thing.
02:35And when every time something else happens, it changes the audience's understanding or view of what's actually going on. And it keeps that pace up right to the end. For an actor, it's an absolutely exhausting play to be in.
02:51But the lovely thing is you throw all that information at the audience, but the audience will never guess the ending, will they?
02:58None of them guess the ending. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I think I'm going to, anybody who does know the ending, I'm going to swear them to silence.
03:08Oh, you must do. You must do.
03:09Because it, you know, it's, the thing is also, one has to take into consideration the period of the 20s when the play was written.
03:20It was a play where romantic comedies in particular were very popular. Also, murder mysteries were very popular. And believe it or not, also ghost stories were very popular.
03:33And that there is some, another thing going on behind this, because in the 1920s, there was a very, very strong spiritualist movement in the country, because people who'd lost sons, husbands, friends, family members, wanted to get in touch with them.
03:51And of course, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is the most famous example of that. But it was very, very popular. And of course, this play contains ghosts. So it, it has all three of the things that were very popular.
04:11It has, it has, it has romance. It has a murder. It has criminals. It has ghosts.
04:22Fantastic.
04:23What could you ask for? It is just pure escapism, but it's a wonderful escapism. You know, it's the sort of thing that you, you don't come out of the theatre, think, you know, with great cerebral thoughts in your mind.
04:38It's not trying to teach you anything. It's not preaching at you. Because in 19, the 1920s, the ordinary public were not interested in that.
04:47You know, they'd just been through a dreadful war. And what they wanted was escapist entertainment. And that's what this gives them.
04:55Fantastic. Well, it sounds lovely. Good luck with it. I'm sure it'll go brilliantly.
05:00Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Phil.
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