Being lovers of musical theatre it was a step out of our comfort zone when we headed along to the Regent Theatre this week to see The Lady Vanishes.
The show is based on Alfred Hitchcock’s 1938 classic thriller and is set on a train that’s travelling from Vienna through to Zurich.
The show opens at the railway station where we meet our cast of characters. We have the well to do British Governess, Miss Froy. The beautiful and well spoken Iris who is heading back to London to marry. There are Eric and his mistress Margaret, Australian Doctor Max and two cricket-obsessed friends.
During the journey, Miss Froy and Iris strike up a real friendship, however, it is abruptly halted when after a nap Iris wakes to find Miss Froy has disappeared. Upon revealing what’s happened to the wider group, all deny having even met Miss Froy!
Iris, played by Lorna Fitzgerald, has no other option but to turn to Max in the hope that they can locate the vanishing lady somewhere on the train. Fitzgerald does an effortless job of transforming carefree Iris into a paranoid wreck as she searches for Miss Froy.
James Boswell, playing Max, was promoted from understudy for the opening night and did a sterling job in the lead role.
Although quite dark in places the cricket-mad duo, played by Ben Nealon and Robert Duncan, made the audience laugh. The dry wit and sarcasm of the pair felt natural, just like the characters really were long time good friends in real life.
The staging of the play made for a very atmospheric performance with a very believable feeling that you were watching people on an actual moving train.
Overall the play was very entertaining, with something for everyone, however, there were a couple of technical issues with the sound that made hearing the dialogue tricky at times. This mainly seemed to be around scenes with lots of characters on stage and the mixing in of the background sounds
As I previously said this isn’t a genre that I am personally familiar with but we really did enjoy this play, I would definitely recommend both this play and maybe trying something you wouldn’t normally go to see at the theatre because you might find you enjoy it as much as we did!
[box type=”info” align=”alignleft” class=”” width=””]The Lady Vanishes is on at the Regent Theatre until Saturday 13th April. Contact the box office on 0844 871 7649 for tickets or visit the Regent Website.[/box]
