Hydrocracker Productions

Brighton theatre company Hydrocracker Productions are set to transform an abandoned tunnel under Brighton Station for a retelling of Charles Dickens’ chilling, railway ghost story The Signalman from October 15-November 8.

When a traveller meets a lonely railway worker stationed in a deep, gloomy cutting near a dark tunnel, the troubled worker tells him about a phantom who appears shortly before tragic deaths on the railway. The sceptical traveller provides rational explanations but is soon faced with harrowing questions he cannot answer.

The Signalman features Oliver Clayton as The Signalman and Jem Wall as the Visitor.

Oliver Clayton was recently cast for Season 2 of Netflix’s Black Doves which also stars Keira Knightly and Ben Whishaw. Clayton is best known to stage audiences for his stint in the West End’s longest running comedy The Play That Goes Wrong.

Brighton-based actor-director Jem Wall has worked for more than three decades, with character performances in Steve McQueen’s Blitz, Andor, Game of Thrones, EastEnders, Doctor Who and a stage career at the helm of Hydrocracker bringing world-class theatre to new audiences and spaces across the UK.

Alongside his own Hydrocracker productions, Jem has performed as an actor at Royal Shakespeare Company, National Theatre, Young Vic, Shakespeare's Globe and the Liverpool Everyman.

Charles Dickens famously wrote The Signalman in 1866 following his own near-death experience in a train crash at Staplehurst in Kent when he was travelling with his mistress Ellen Ternan. He helped rescue fellow passengers and was deeply affected by the experience, losing his voice for two weeks after the event and becoming ever more frightened of railway travel.

The Signalman is directed by 2025 The Stage Debut Awards-nominated director Nathan Crossan-Smith. Currently director associate at Royal Opera House, Nathan has also directed at the Donmar Warehouse, the Southbank Centre, Liverpool Everyman, National Youth Theatre, National Theatre Wales and Royal & Derngate Northampton. He is a trustee of the disability-led theatre company Graeae.

Originally commissioned by BBC Radio 4 for Christmas Day, this adaption of The Signalman comes from Jonathan Holloway. Holloway is a three-times Edinburgh Fringe First Award-winner and a first-prize-winner at Prix Italia. In 1982 Holloway founded theatre company Red Shift which The Stage critic Lyn Gardner credited with ‘raising the tone of theatre’ at Edinburgh Festival with its revered 1980s productions. After four decades of bold reinventions of works by great writers including Shakespeare and Orwell, Holloway turns to Dickens to add an unexpected twist to a classic ghost story.

The Signalman has been supported by GTR Rail 200 Improvement Fund as part of last year’s celebrations for 200 years of the Railway in the UK.

The show is on from October 15-November 8, with an accessible BSL performance on November 6. Tickets start at £20, and a series of special talks and underground tunnel tours will also be taking place during the show’s run.