The Ghost Train 

The Haymarket, Basingstoke 

Until Saturday

GHOSTLY goings-on at a remote Cornish railway station form the basis for this sparkling comedy-thriller, directed by Patric Kearns.

Before becoming a septuagenarian national treasure thanks to his delightful portrayal of the gentle, bumbling Private Godfrey in classic sitcom Dad's Army, Arnold Ridley was a prolific playwright, and this work, written in 1923 when he was just 27, is his best-loved.

The action takes place on a stormy night, when a group of six travellers arrive late from their delayed train and are informed by dour stationmaster Saul Hodgkin (Jeffrey Holland) that they have missed their connection.

Worse still, there are no more trains running that night and the nearest house is five miles away.

The travellers grumpily accept that they will have to spend a cold night in the station's waiting room, but when Hodgkin tells them a spooky tale about the stationmaster who died there exactly 20 years ago, and the ghost train that can sometimes be seen tearing through the station in the dead of night, nerves begin to jangle.

And when Hodgkin, having apparently gone home to his bed, is later found dead on the platform at exactly the same time that the old stationmaster died 20 years earlier, a creeping sense of dread falls over the party as they fear the imminent arrival of the terrible train.

The Ghost Train is a true comedy-thriller, being laugh out loud funny in places but also providing plenty of genuinely scary moments to make the audience jump.

Basingstoke Gazette:

The waiting room set is simple yet effective, and there is excellent use of light to suggest the passing of trains outside, and of sound to convey the raging storm.

The cast are universally excellent, with Tom Butcher stealing most of the laughs as upper class twit Teddie Deakin.

Such frightful fun means that this is one train definitely worth catching.

The Ghost Trains runs until Saturday.

Tickets are available from the box office on 01256 844244 or online at anvil arts.org.uk.

Ian Kelly