ON STAGE: Girl On The Train @ Schenectady Civic Playhouse

By J Hunter.

Examine this sentence: “I told the truth! I just didn’t know I was lying!” Think of it this way: What if what you THOUGHT was the truth was a product of seeing something – or being told something – and you got it wrong? This concept is the basis for “Girl on the Train,” Rachel Wagstaff & Duncan Abel’s adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ novel and the DreamWorks film.

The story revolves around Rachel Watson (Jennifer Schnurr, whose dialogue leads this article), who we first see at her lowest point: on her bed in her cluttered apartment, with a nasty gash on her forehead and no memory of what happened the previous evening. The morning gets more complicated with the arrival of Detective Inspector Gaskill (a cantankerous Matthew Moross), who is investigating the disappearance of Megan Hipwell (Siobhan Shea), an art gallery manager who lives two houses away from where Rachel used to live with her long-suffering husband Tom (Tom Templeton).

Rachel “knows” Megan, but not by her real name. Although she was fired from her job six months before, Rachel still rides the train into London every day; that train goes by Tom’s house and Megan’s house, allowing Rachel to spy into the backyards of both houses. Megan and her husband Scott (Isaac Scranton) have become fantasy figures for Rachel, encompassing the happy life she wanted with Tom. But one day, Rachel sees something that not only blows up her make-believe world but puts her on a path of discovery that exposes more lies and more pain.

Schnurr’s Rachel is an absolute dumpster fire: A blackout drunk who leaves rambling messages on Tom’s voicemail, driving his second wife Anna (Laura Darling) to distraction. Mystery novels are filled with regular people trying to solve mysteries, but when Rachel fills her water bottle with Tanqueray before she goes “sleuthing”, it’s a fair bet she isn’t going to be a modern-day Miss Marple. Schnurr mixes a growing terror with a dogged determination to solve what happened to the woman that Rachel used as a source of strength.

Rachel’s interactions with Scott and Megan’s psychiatrist Kamel (Alex Yun) reap discoveries that drive Rachel deeper into the mystery. Scranton’s Scott is a simple man who is permanently boggled: he didn’t understand any of the art Megan tried to interest him in, and cannot understand why Megan has left him. Because Rachel misrepresents herself as a new patient, Yun’s interaction with her starts out professionally, but soon, we see all his doubts and lies. (Spoiler Alert: every character has some, one way or another.)

The movie version of “Girl on the Train” moved the action to the United States (color me shocked …), but Wagstaff & Abel properly brought the action back to England. Props go to director Jennifer Van Iderstyne for not choosing to make the show “an accent play.” Apart from Moross’ tight Cockney and Scranton’s broad Australian dialect, all performers just keep the dialogue crisp and let the words do the work. The pulsing techno soundtrack sets the kind of vibe we’ve seen in British crime classics like “Layer Cake,” putting the audience in a cinematic frame of mind. 

Unfortunately, scenes where Rachel is “researching” on her laptop over tense techno fall flat because we don’t see whatever is shocking her, making it just another scene Rachel is stumbling through. That’s less on Van Iderstyne and more on Wagstaff & Abel running into the issues that usually come from taking a big-screen experience and trying to shrink it down to stage size. A “memory place” above the action lets us “see” what Rachel saw – or thinks she saw – and there are flashbacks throughout the play that either fill in the blanks or create even more.

Van Iderstyne’s simple staging works perfectly with David Zwierankin’s continually morphing stage design, taking us on Rachel’s dizzying journey through both her lost past and her imaginary present. A great choice was dressing the stage crew like British police officers, always keeping the murder investigation in front of us throughout the two-hour-plus production.

In the end, it’s the cast that keeps “Girl on the Train” on the tracks, walking us through the winding mystery while inhabiting knife-sharp dialogue that can go from hilarious to horrifying in a hot second. Both the dialogue and the performances keep you guessing right to the end, and the switchbacks and surprises you run into along the way only make things even more interesting. And that’s the truth!

Schenectady Civic Players presents Girl On The Train, Wednesday, October 22 through Sunday, October 26. For tickets and show times, please go to www.civicplayers.org.