The Railway Children review – full steam ahead for Bradford City of Culture

This is a glorious piece of storytelling, spirited, sentimental and spectacular. It’s also a touching tribute to the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, one of the stars (along with Dinah Sheridan, Jenny Agutter and Bernard Cribbins) of the much-loved 1970 film. At that time, the KWVR had recently been saved by volunteers and its use in the film set it on the way to becoming the established tourist attraction it is today.

At the centre of the evening is Mike Kenny’s adaptation of E Nesbit’s novel, originally directed by Damien Cruden at York Railway Museum in 2008. Now the two are at it again, with a production for Bradford City of Culture that also relies on York Theatre Royal and the KWVR.

The whole evening stretches out for some five hours, from Keighley Station and back. To begin with, there is the journey from Keighley to Oxenhope by steam train. At Oxenhope, the auditorium is a temporarily converted engine shed, with a platform on each side and four rows of seats. Then, after you’ve sated yourself with the play and the franchise stands, it’s back to Keighley by steam train.

Mike Kenny’s adaptation is masterly, not least in its use of slightly older versions of the children to narrate, playing out the scenes and arguing among themselves the while, with a final neat tableau of their earlier selves. Comfortably prosperous father of an Anglo-Indian family is wrongly imprisoned (the children are told he’s gone away on business) and they move to Yorkshire in this version; Nesbit kept quiet about the exact location.

There they learn, above all, a warm philosophy of welcoming outsiders and adjusting their actions to others’ sensibilities from their mother, Perks the porter and the Old Gentleman who waves from the train. His ability to solve all difficulties strains credibility, but the message of the scenes with the famed Ukrainian writer, imprisoned by the Russians and now lost and bewildered until helped by the family and the Old Gentleman, could not be more appropriate today, 120 years after Nesbit wrote them.

And then there are the adventures! The cast is enormous, comprising around 14, and an uncounted band of extras, while both platforms are busy with racing feet. The extras, by the way, include many wonderfully well-disciplined small children: the Perks family are fun! In between the platforms is the railway line, with two acting spaces manoeuvred into place by unsung heroes and a railway bridge at the far end.

But what, you may ask, of the famous scene where Roberta, frantically waving her red underwear, stops the train before the results of a landslide? It’s here, just before the interval (to give them time to clear up, says Phyllis), the entry of a steam train, making this truly about the railway children. And it recurs at the end, when Bobby’s sudden awareness of her father is one of the most famous of recognition scenes.

Cruden’s manipulation of his large cast – frequently as train passengers or anonymous bystanders – is magnificent, but he also has to establish links between his principals and the audience – and here the three siblings excel. Farah Ashraf is Roberta, who finally gets absorbed into the grown-ups; Raj Digva’s Peter is poised between mischief and dignity; Jessica Kaur as the youngest, Phyllis, probably gets most sympathy, but all operate perfectly as a trio.

The adaptation rightly foregrounds the children, but Asha Kingsley’s dignified and soulful Mother, Graeme Hawley’s comical and good-hearted Perks, Paul Hawkyard’s double of Father and the Russian and Moray Treadwell’s deus ex machina as the Old Gentleman make their mark. So, too, do the entire cast, from housemaids upwards.

The whole thing is beautifully integrated, from Joanna Scotcher’s set and costume designs to Christopher Madin’s evocative music.