Review: The Lady Vanishes @ Church Hill Theatre, Edinburgh

“This is an energetic, and full blooded rendition of a less than thrilling thriller.” Threepenny Theatricals’ ‘The Lady Vanishes’ succeeds despite its script, not because of it.

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📍 Church Hill Theatre, Edinburgh
📅 Tue 4 to Sat 8 Apr 2023
🕖 Evenings: 7.30pm | Matinees, Wed & Sat: 2.30pm
🕖 Running time: 2hrs 30 mins, includes one interval
🎼 Book by: Derek Webb after the novel by Ethel Lina White
🎬 Artistic Director: Fiona Main
🫰 Production Manager: Ross Main
💡 Lighting Designer: Mike Pendlowski
🔊 Sound Designer: Neil French
⚒️ Set Designer: Fiona Main
🖌️ Scenic Artist: Chloe Bingham
🪡 Costume Design & Coordination: Lauren McAnna
🎂 Parental Discretion
🎭 Wheelchair Accessible Venue, Wheelchair Accessible Toilets, Audio Induction Loop

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One of Edinburgh’s newest Amateur Theatre companies, Threepenny Theatricals, returned to the doughty Church Hill Theatre with The Lady Vanishes this May. Put aside fond memories of Hitchcock’s 1938 cinematic masterpiece to the side, Derek Webb’s new adaptation of Ethel Lina White’s 1936 book hives much closer to the source text.

First let me say that the cast give it their all. Rebekah Lansley makes a charmingly posh wastrel-cum-hero Iris Carr, whilst Greg McCafferty Thomson turns on the charm to play her sleuth in shining armour Max Hare. The supporting cast are game as you like, but for those expecting the cricket mad Charters and Caldicott – they don’t feature in the original narrative. Instead we have a pair of intervention-shy sisters, Evelyn and Rose Flood Porter (Dorothy Johnstone & Liz Landsman) and a Sherlock Holmes-lite character, The Professor (Geoff Lee).

The main-part of the story runs parallel to the cinematic, though with more telling and less showing. The obviously villainous Doctor’s (Simon Boothroyd) patient is safely locked away in another compartment from their initial departure; the fate of the mysteriously vanished Miss Froy (Rae Lamond) only comes clear very near curtain-down. There’s no espionage here, no nuns in high-heels, crises of conscience, or frantic train escapes. Indeed the reasons for the other passengers claiming not to have noticed Miss Froy’s vanishing are casually exposited in private conversations with zero consequences.

What’s clear from this, presumably quite faithful theatrical adaptation, is why Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, took the original novel only as a starting place. There’s almost no tension throughout, and a plot-line involving the Doctor convincing Iris’s allies to drug her to alleviate her mental distress is uncomfortably rooted in early 20th century misogyny. The mystery when it falls out produces a sort of happy ending, and little more.

Threepenny Theatricals do their best with the text, unquestionably, eking merry laughs from waggling eyebrows and imitations of a moving train on a stable stage. Fiona & Ross Main give their cast full reign to create larger than life characters, on a recognisably locomotive set. It’s hard to conceive that any faithful playing of Webb’s script could be any better. It just so happens that Hitchcock created a cinematic tale far better than its source, and bucked the general rule of screen adaptations suffering in comparison to their base texts.

Threepenny Theatricals can hold their heads high in their execution nonetheless. This is an energetic, and full blooded rendition of a less than thrilling thriller. I look forward to seeing what they can do with a better text.

The Lady Vanishes played the Church Hill Theatre, Edinburgh until 13th May 2023. It is a Threepenny Theatricals production.

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The Lady Vanishes played the Church Hill Theatre until 13th May 2023. For more information, click here.