THE SIGNALMAN
Drayton Arms Theatre
★★★★
“a nerve-tingling and thought-provoking adaptation”
We begin in rural Somerset, at the Clayton Inn boarding house in the small hamlet of Clayton. It’s a tight-knit Victorian community where visitors are warmly welcomed. Yet beneath its peaceful surface lies the memory of a long-ago railway disaster — a tragedy whose ghost still casts a shadow over the village.
Helen Bang, as our visitor to the village (this production’s version of the narrator), and Peter Rae (as the signalman) lead a riveting adaptation of the short story first published by Charles Dickens in 1866. Dickens wrote the story shortly after surviving the Staplehurst rail crash in 1865, an incident that affected him deeply and inspired the eerie sense of trauma and claustrophobia that permeates the signal box.
This trauma comes through in the signalman, who claims to have seen the same apparition shortly before two previous tragedies that occurred on the section of the line that he is patrolling; its first appearance coming hours before a train crashed in the tunnel, its second preceding the death of a young woman on the line, whose life the signalman had tried desperately to save. Most eerily though, the apparition has returned for a third time, leaving him incessantly trying to decipher its warnings and avert whatever may be the next tragedy.
Peter Rae expertly crafts this role as our protagonist descends further into confusion and anxiety following the unusual goings-on. Rae acts as Dickens’ storyteller and moves the plot with excellent precision. The most impressive part of his performance is that he encapsulates the themes that were central to the original story over a century later. We see the dangers of isolation, with the signalman working long hours in an isolated location. The performance also achieves a balance whereby the conclusion can be made by the audience as to the origins of the ghostly appearances. Could they be the result of a psychological episode driven by stress and sleep-deprivation-induced hallucinations? Alternatively, could we have entered into the realms of the supernatural?
The tremendous two-hander is completed by Helen Bang, the visitor, who befriends the lonely signalman and accompanies him on his night shifts. Earning his trust, she acts as a sounding board, allowing him to open up about his psychological frailty. She seems an innocuous passer-by but her greeting — “Halloa, below there” — hints that she may be more closely tied to the apparitions than she first appears. It is a quietly stylish performance, as any break in her calmness would destroy the tension of the piece.
The play is able to effortlessly transport us to the scene due to the excellent set design (Karen Holley); incorporating a signal box, fully kitted out with signal flags, levers and switches, behind a railway track. This is accompanied by, in a first for the Drayton Arms Theatre, surround sound effects (Steve Ramondt) which bring the audience into the action.
The climax is arguably not as strong as the set-up, with the ending feeling slightly abrupt. This also means that the play had potential to explore some of the themes in greater depth, where, for example, it felt like the visitor may develop her own character arc in the story. Nonetheless, the show is a nerve-tingling and thought-provoking adaptation which gives new life to the famous novella.
THE SIGNALMAN
Drayton Arms Theatre
Reviewed on 11th December 2025
by Luke Goscomb
Photography by Victoria Lari
