‘The Railway Children’: Northern Stage creates a new holiday musical tradition

For its 25th anniversary season, Northern Stage has crafted a musical tribute to its community. The Upper Valley professional theater company brought Edith Nesbit’s beloved children’s book “The Railway Children” to the United States, adapting it for its home in White River Junction, a historic railroad town. With original music, it becomes the company’s annual holiday musical.

“We wanted to adapt it as a new American holiday tradition. We need them!” explained Carol Dunne, Northern Stage’s producing artistic director, who adapted and is directing the play with Eric Love, former education director.

“We’ve all done ‘A Christmas Carol’,” Dunne said. “And coming out of the pandemic there are so many parallels. We felt uplifted by our community, by our region, by Vermont and New Hampshire during the pandemic. We all did!

“We were all saying, thank God we all live up here. There is such a beauty to small town life — I think there are some great lessons about community.”

Northern Stage will present the world premiere of its musical “The Railway Children” from Nov. 22 to Jan. 1 at the Barrette Center for the Arts, 74 Gates St. in White River Junction. In addition to the adaptation of the book by Dunne and Love, music and lyrics were written by Jane Shaw and Mark Hartman.

“The Railway Children,” which first appeared as a book and serialized in The London Magazine in 1905, concerns a family forced to move from their affluent London home to a rustic house in the country, after the father is falsely imprisoned for selling government secrets. The three children — Roberta (“Bobbie”), Peter and Phyllis — find solace in the local railway station and the constant comings and goings of the trains. And the solution to their family’s problem.

Northern Stage has moved the location and time to White River in 1929, during the Great Depression. Father has been mistakenly incarcerated for embezzlement but, otherwise, the rich and delightful characters and the heartwarming story are pretty much the same.

Still, it took a lot of time and work and a bit of genius to make it happen.

“I saw this play done in a very ‘panto’ style (with songs and dances, etc.) in England about 10 years ago with my children in a train station,” Dunne said. “And we were talking about our 25th anniversary season and we wanted to focus on our town, which is a railway station. And so I bought the book for everyone on my staff and said, read this book. It’s about kids whose lives are transformed to the community in a railway town.

“Everybody read the book and said it’s too British,” she said.

“It was: ‘Why should we care about a bunch of rich kids who lose their cook and maid and have to move to the country?’” Love said. “But there was so much heart in this story, and there are so many lessons about, like, letting go of the material things and finding the beauty in community.”

Still, the real selling point was that the book is in the public domain (no rights costs).

“We can adapt it,” Love said.

“The first challenge was when are we going to set it?” Dunne said. “It’s America, not England, and we went through a couple of things, including right after the First World War and the Spanish flu. Not just coming out of the pandemic! — though we almost did.”

Once they decided on 1929, everything seemed to fall into place.

“That is a time here where the railway was important,” Dunne said. “Thirty trains came through here a day, and it was really the heyday, I think of White River’s connectivity.”

Dunne and Love were very much attracted by the way the Nesbit writes.

“We wanted to preserve her voice, but also bring it into a way that felt very naturally American,” Love said. “The moments I remember are like, ‘How ripping! Let’s have buns for tea.’ That feels very natural in Britain, but it’s not the way we think about tea here. So (the challenge was) adapting these lines so it’s right for America, and finding a group of narrators that can narrate lines straight from the book — and get that flavor of her writing.”

Also in 1929, White River was an immigrant town, helping Northern Stage continue its mission of inclusiveness.

“So, in our casting and in our choices, we are reflecting (the time),” Dunne said. “This is after World War I, 10 years, so our station agent is played by a woman. Women had come into these roles during the war, so there’s a lot of historical accuracy to what we’re doing.”

One big challenge was that Nesbit’s original was a compendium of stories, far too many to include all in an evening of theater.

“We adapted every single one of them,” Love said. “Chapter by chapter, really went through every single one of them. We felt the arc of the relationships (in the choice of stories).”

Then there was the addition of music.

“When we had written most of the script, we began collaborations with Mark and Jane on the music, and that’s a stunning addition to this piece, so it really is a play with a great deal of music,” Dunne said. “Jane is a brilliant sound designer, with whom we worked for many years, but she and Mark have just been doing the music for ‘A Christmas Carol’ at the Guthrie Theater. Jane grew up right next to a train track, and she’s so passionate about trains.

“So they’ve brought this piece to incredible life,” Dunne said.

“We wanted to find authenticity in the way music is woven into the show,” Love said. “Having actor-musicians makes it not a musical, but a play with music, that numbers can spring up very organically.”

Most importantly, the children are real characters, not superficial or stick figures. (Because of their ages, two casts of children will alternate nights.)

“They’re not child roles, they’re roles,” Dunne said.

“We’re lucky that we have a really strong education program that we’ve invested in for almost a decade,” Love said. “These are not professional actors from New York; they are local students, but they are trained — they have experience, they are very high quality — and when they act across from these wonderful Equity actors, it’s magic.”

“I credit Eric with that,” Dunne said. “Eric trained them.”

Almost as an afterthought, Love said, “One of the biggest challenges was how to bring trains on stage. With the scenic design and the staging, we’re bringing trains in many, many different ways, and many surprising ways — and many deceptively simply ways.”

Special events

On Sunday, Dec. 4, immediately following the 2 p.m. performance, audience members are invited to a fun afternoon of family holiday activities. Sing along to Christmas jingles, deck the lobby with arts and crafts, or enjoy a cup of hot cocoa over chats with local historians and artists.

On Saturday, Dec. 24, join in for some extra merriment before the 2 and 7:30 p.m. performances, there’ll be complimentary hot cocoa and candy canes for all audience members.

jim.lowe@rutlandherald.com