Audition on 20 July: “The Ghost Train”
We are delighted to announce open auditions for “The Ghost Train” on Sunday, 20 July from 6pm to 9pm at South Brent Village Hall.
Arnold Ridley’s classic comedy-thriller, The Ghost Train, was first produced in 1925, the very year that Arthur Manning launched amateur dramatics in South Brent. We’re delighted to be staging our production to celebrate not just 100 years of drama in South Brent, but 100 years of The Ghost Train, and 200 years since the world’s first passenger railway was opened.
The play has been a firm favourite with professional and non-professional theatre companies ever since 1925: SBADS last performed the play in 1944.
Six passengers find themselves stranded late at night in the waiting-room of an isolated Cornish railway station. Ignoring the ghostly tales and dire warnings of the stationmaster, they decide to stay where they are until morning – with terrifying consequences. Finally, all is revealed and the details of a fiendish plot are laid bare.
We will be performing the revised edition of the play.
There are ten roles to be cast:
- SAUL HODGKIN – stationmaster, a middle-aged, rather heavy-set man, with iron-grey hair and almost white chin whiskers, his face heavily lined.
- RICHARD WINTHROP – a brown-haired, well set up man; smooth face.
- ELSIE WINTHROP – his wife, a dark-haired woman.
- CHARLES MURDOCK – a well set up young man; smooth face, fair hair and complexion.
- PEGGY MURDOCK – his newly-married wife, a dark haired woman.
- MISS BOURNE – a severe, spinster type of woman.
- TEDDIE DEAKIN – a silly-ass, foppish Englishman.
- JULIA PRICE – an attractive woman.
- JOHN STERLING
- JACKSON – a policeman.
The Ghost Train will be directed by Cathie Pannell, and will run from 20 to 22nd November 2025, including a Saturday matinee.
Everyone is welcome to come along for a read-through of the play, with no obligation to take a part, on Sunday, 20 July from 6pm to 9pm at South Brent Village Hall.
As well as a range of good acting roles (for which we will inevitably be flexible with ages), the play has an extraordinary opportunity for back-stage work too, with the need to create the illusion of a real train pulling through the station in which the play is set, which may require up to a dozen people.
You are also welcome to come along if you’d like to find out about roles behind the scenes operating effects. We are planning a further meeting for persons interested in effects on the weekend of 2/3 August: details to be confirmed.
This amateur production of “The Ghost Train” is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals Ltd on behalf of Samuel French Ltd. www.concordtheatricals.co.uk.