Friday, November 15

Tag: The Signalman

The Signalman – Metal Culture, Liverpool
North West

The Signalman – Metal Culture, Liverpool

From ArtsGroupie, the producers of Kitty: Queen of the Washhouse and A Portrait of William Roscoe, comes a slice of winter terror with a new adaptation from David Griffiths, who also directs, of the much-loved Charles Dickens supernatural classic, The Signalman. Following the arrival of a somewhat lost and larger than life visitor (John Maguire) at a remote signal box on a dark winter night, the solitary railway signalman (Zoran Blackie) tells him of a spectre that has been haunting him with each appearance preceding a tragic event on the railway on which the signalman works, a deep cutting near a tunnel entrance on a lonely stretch of the railway line where he controls the movement of the passing trains and is alerted to danger by his fellow signalmen via the telegraph and alarms. T...
The Signalman – King’s Theatre, Edinburgh
Scotland

The Signalman – King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

Most notable was how, with extreme economy (one actor, a sparse set and some carefully understated lighting and sound), this play generated such power, intensity and atmosphere. It's set in 1919, forty years after the Tay Bridge disaster of 1879 as Thomas Barclay, the signalman, now 64, re-lives the events of the horrific night. The sense of place is perfectly evoked by Jon Beale and Andy Cowan’s carefully constructed soundscape, the gulls, wind and rain a constant reminder of the vast expanse of a raging Tay estuary. Beneath a sky shaken and stirred by the swirling, gargantuan storm that hit Tayside that Sunday we’re immersed in the cosy confines of the signal box as Tom McGovern plays a haunted, traumatised Barclay, moving restlessly about the small set of coat-stand, desk and two chairs...