Brighton’s Hydrocracker Productions

Brighton’s Hydrocracker Productions are all about putting theatre in the most appropriate non-theatre spaces they can find.

They did it with Joe Orton's Erpingham Camp on Brighton Pier.

Now they go one step further, bringing Charles Dickens’ chilling railway ghost story The Signalman to an abandoned tunnel under Brighton Station from October 15-November 8 – the first time the station’s underground tunnels have been used for a theatrical production.

Dickens famously wrote The Signalman in 1866 following his own near-death experience in a train crash in Kent. This latest version will be directed by Nathan Crossan-Smith in an adaptation by Jonathan Holloway, bringing together Oliver Clayton as The Signalman and Jem Wall as The Visitor.

“I knew about the tunnels,” Jem says. “I knew that there were tunnels under Brighton Station. A lot of people know about them but have never got into them.

“Sometimes you choose a text or a play that you want to do but with this one I just loved the idea of the venue. I thought what would work down there and it came to me four or five years ago The Signalman would be great down there. The idea was a while ago and it has taken that long to make it happen.

“In 2025 it was the 200th anniversary of the first railway passenger journey and the railway companies were putting money into it and and inviting ideas from people who could think of ways to celebrate it. I thought about it and I pitched this idea to Railway 200 who have provided a significant contribution to it.

“There are a number of tunnels under Brighton Station, and we looked at those tunnels and what we wanted to do was to use the architecture and the place itself. It makes very little sense to go in there and put up theatre lighting and theatre rigging. You want to use the tunnel. Of course, there are some modifications that you need but you want a brilliant lighting designer and a brilliant sound designer who is actually going to use that architecture.”

The tunnel itself is actually a fire exit for a particular office at Brighton Station and sadly isn’t wheelchair accessible. In all other respects, it will be the perfect setting.

“We're talking about a ghost story and we're talking about Halloween so that works and we're talking about a ghost story set at the mouth of a railway tunnel and we're going to do it in a railway tunnel so that works. I'm a great believer in ‘Yes, of course!’

“It's a story about a ghost that warns you but other people interpret it differently. Some people say that the ghost is trying to help but other people say that the ghost is malevolent. Some people ask whether the ghost is there at all or is The Visitor just seeing himself? It's open to interpretation and that's the fascination of it.

“I am playing The Visitor. It is interesting that neither of them have a name. You've got The Visitor and you've got The Signalman. And what you've got is a chance meeting between them, between somebody that looks like a gentleman, somebody who is fascinated by the railways, and somebody who actually works on the railways. And I think like any ghost story, you have got the theme of curiosity. The Visitor wants to find out things that he doesn't know about and maybe there is a danger in that...”