Following two nominations at this year’s Olivier Awards with MasterCard, The Railway Children will be pulling into London once again this summer when it returns to the former Eurostar terminal at Waterloo Station from 18 June to 4 September.
Mike Kenny’s adaptation of E Nesbit’s popular novel was first staged at the National Railway Museum in York in 2008 before travelling to London last summer, where it found its ideal home amid the disused tracks and platforms of the vacant Eurostar terminal. Such was the popularity of the show that it extended its summer season into the autumn, finally drawing out of the station on 2 January 2011.
Telling the story of three children who decamp with their mother from London to rural Yorkshire, E Nesbit’s 1906 novel was famously made into a film in 1970 starring Jenny Agutter and Bernard Cribbins. As last year, the stage adaptation will feature the original gentleman’s saloon carriage from the film, along with a real steam train from the National Railway Museum.
No casting has yet been confirmed for the new run of The Railway Children, which last year starred Caroline Harker and Marshall Lancaster.
In the mean time, the production will find out if it has triumphed in the Best Entertainment and Best Sound Design categories at this year’s Olivier Awards ceremony at Theatre Royal Drury Lane on 13 March.
CB