Mockingbird Theatre Company’s production of the thriller The Girl on the Train threatens to throw audiences right into the centre of the action, reeports arts editor HELEN MUSA.  

First there was The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins’ best-selling novel. Then came the hit film starring Emily Blunt. Finally, adapted by Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel, it’s a stage thriller, one that until now hasn’t been seen in Canberra.

Mockingbird Theatre Company’s production at Belconnen Arts Centre threatens to throw audiences right into the centre of the action. 

As the title suggests, the play revolves around Rachel, a woman whose marriage has collapsed. Every day she catches the same train into London, observing the lives unfolding along the railway line and becoming fixated on the street where she used to live.

In director Chris Baldock’s production, audiences will make the journey with her. The seating replicates what the British call a “diamond crossing”, an X-shaped railway junction, with the audience seated inside the X. Sound, lighting and projections will heighten the sensation of travelling by train.

When I catch up with Morgan Heath-Williams, who plays the plum role of Rachel, she says placing the audience inside the action mirrors the voyeuristic nature of the story.

She spends her journeys watching the lives of strangers, especially those in the street where she once lived. Then a woman disappears.

Described by one journalist as “a harsher, suburban, sex-filled variation on The Mousetrap”, The Girl on the Train is usually billed as a psychological thriller, with Rachel becoming an amateur detective, much to the frustration of Detective Gaskill, because of her alcoholism, blackouts, and a history of harassing her ex-husband.

Without giving too much away, suspicion falls on Rachel’s ex after he is seen kissing the woman who goes missing.

It’s a substantial departure for Heath-Williams, who won accolades in 2023 playing a bumbling private detective in the burlesque production Catch Jazida.

Although it’s been some time since she last appeared in a serious play, she has an impressive background in dance and burlesque. Performing as Artemis Seven, she reached the Miss Burlesque Australia finals before representing Australia at the Burlesque Hall of Fame in Las Vegas.

But The Girl on the Train is another matter entirely.

After taking acting classes with Baldock, she auditioned for the role of Rachel. He admitted casting her was something of a risk.

“Can you carry this role the entire time? It’s a big commitment,” he asked.

Her answer was an emphatic yes.

She’s rarely off stage. “I only leave it at interval, and who knows? Chris might tie me to the stage for that, too.”

The play explores memory, obsession and betrayal through characters who are, she says, “so distinct and human”. Much of the action unfolds through Rachel’s troubled mind, leaving audiences constantly questioning whether they can trust what they’re seeing.

“But Chris has such a love of plays and audiences and he’s very good at connecting the real humanity underlying the narrative, so you’ll get swept away,” she predicts.

Heath-Williams is quick to point out that Rachel is only one part of a richly populated drama.

“It’s a multi-character play and all the characters are very flawed, but very real.”

Rachel witnesses the woman who goes missing, but when she tries to become involved, people think she’s crazy. Heath-Williams believes audiences may feel the same way for a while, because Rachel herself cannot distinguish fact from fiction. 

Rachel is also a liar, although Heath-Williams wonders whether she’s really trying to conceal overwhelming shame. Having lost her job, she pretends to commute to work every day. The familiar one-hour train journey, repeated morning and evening, gives her the comforting illusion that her life still has purpose.

“The challenge is to play the truth in the character,” she says. “Rachel is such a flawed character and some people may find her unlikeable, but as an actor you have to understand where she’s coming from.”

As for Rachel’s ex-husband?

“He’s a real bastard,” Heath-Williams says, adding, “but a charming one. All the characters have charming elements.”

Exciting thriller though it is, she insists The Girl on the Train feels uncomfortably real.

“It could happen anywhere, to anyone.”

The Girl on the Train, Belconnen Arts Centre, August 5-22.

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