The tunnels under Brighton Station are to become a theatre for the first time this Hallowe’en when a Dickens ghost story is staged there.
The Signalman is set in a railway tunnel similar to the one under the station and was written in 1866 following Charles Dickens’ own near- death experience in a train crash at Staplehurst in Kent when he was travelling with his mistress Ellen Ternan.
He helped rescue fellow passengers and was deeply affected by the experience, suffering from what may now be seen as PTSD, losing his voice for two weeks after the event and becoming ever more frightened of railway travel.
The story features a traveller who meets a lonely railway worker stationed in a deep, gloomy cutting near a dark tunnel.
The troubled worker tells him about a phantom who appears shortly before tragic deaths on the railway.
The sceptical traveller provides rational explanations but is soon faced with harrowing questions he cannot answer.
The production stars Oliver Clayton, best known for The Play That Goes Wrong, as The Signalman and Brighton-based Jem Wall as The Visitor.
It runs from 15 October to 8 November and tickets are available from brightondome.org Tickets start at £20, and a series of special talks and underground tunnel tours will also be taking place during the show’s run.
