Charles Dickens’ masterful ghost story The Signalman reimagined in an abandoned railway tunnel under Brighton Station, by critically acclaimed immersive theatre company Hydrocracker (Operation Black Antler, Brighton Festival 2016 & The New World Order, Brighton Festival 2011). I need your help. You know how it begins. How it always begins. Enter the tunnel and be part of the story. There is nothing to fear
Preshow Talk: Charles Dickens & The Railways - Professor Tom F Wright
Sun 25 Oct, 2.30pm
To coincide with Hydrocracker’s production of Dickens’ The Signalman in a railway tunnel under Brighton Station, Professor Tom Wright a 19th-century literature specialist from The University of Sussex and an unabashed railway enthusiast, will be giving a special public lecture.
Tom will explore how trains shaped Dickens’ imagination: from the exhilaration of speed and the clamour of crowds to the dark shadow of the Staplehurst crash that nearly killed him. Beneath the tracks themselves, join us for a talk that brings to life the thrill, terror and sheer noise of the Victorian railway age.
Post Show Talk: Adapting Dickens – Jonathan Holloway
Sat 24 Oct, 5.30pm
Acclaimed Playwright Jonathan Holloway will talk about the challenges of adapting a ghost story like The Signalman for both radio and stage. The Signalman has become an audience favourite when it comes to theatrical spookers… but there's more to it. Dickens himself was in a railway crash shortly before writing it and was ashamed by his own selfish behaviour amongst the wreckage.
This context, combined with the fact that he was a political agitator for worker's rights and was very sceptical about industrial money makers allows (and he will argue for) The Signalman to be seen as one of the darkest and most frightening of Dickens’ stories of human greed conjured into physical reality. As the servant says while serving at the table, ‘enjoy…’
