Classic thriller The Ghost Train on the Wick Theatre stage

Performances will be at The Barn Theatre, Southwick Community Centre on June 18, 19, 20 and 21. Tickets are available on https://wicktheatre.co.uk/

Harry Atkinson is directing: “What happens is you put forward suggestions for plays to do, and they choose one that fits their season. I suggested this one just because it is a lovely play. It's a play that has got everything really. It has got romance and it has got murder and it has got ghosts!

“It's about a group of people that are strangers, a very eclectic group of people, who are stranded at a very remote Cornwall railway station.”

You’ve got a pair of dewy-eyed newlyweds, a bickering married couple, an eccentric elderly lady and an irresponsible dandy of a man…

“One of their party has looked out the window and his hat blew off and he pulled the communication cord to stop the train, much to the annoyance of the other passengers.”

Into the mix comes a mysterious, irascible station master who warns them all of the imminent arrival of the ghost train, a train which always heralds the death of all who behold it…

“But I have to be very careful what I say because I don't want to give it away! But actually I don't think anyone would ever guess the ending. It's a play that goes one way and then another and it's not until Act Three that you understand what is going on and you realise that nothing is what it appears. The great thing is that it's a play that is always coming at you with different things and new things and it really does keep audiences on the edge of their seats all the way through.

“It is very much an ensemble piece. It was first produced in 1925. This is its centenary year. I suggested it before and it was just luck that they took it up this year. It ran in London for a long time and was hugely popular in its day but some of the dialogue is quite obviously 1924 or 1925, and it is not the way that people speak today. One of the first challenges was to encourage the actors to believe in what they were saying. Some of them would be saying to me ‘Well, I would never speak like this!’ but my response was ‘Well, just believe in it.’ You've got to play it with conviction. You've got to respect the text.

“But actually Arnold Ridley's son Nicholas and his wife did update the play. They didn’t change it a great deal but they have taken out some of the references that would not mean very much to people anymore and they have changed some of the dialogue which sits a little bit uncomfortably, mainly relating to the way that the sexes interact. And I think they've done it really well. I think that Arnold Ridley would be very pleased with what his son and his wife have done with it. I certainly prefer this version to the original version.”

Part of the fun is the challenge. You've got to suggest three trains. The first train by which they arrive, and then you've got the ghost train: “And I'm not going to say anything about the third train!”

Pictured: Saul Hodgkin played by John Garland lies dead on the waiting room floor. The actors left to right are: Lex Lake playing Elsie Winthrop, Roger Butler playing Teddy Deacon, Dan Bayford playing Charles Murdock, Naomi Crisp, playing Peggy Murdock and Neil Drew playing Richard Winthrop.