Every day, Rachel Watson watches a couple from a train window. She believes their lives are perfect – certainly better than hers. Her marriage has collapsed, and she’s turned to the bottle; her drinking causes blackouts and gaps in her memory. 

One day she sees something shocking from her carriage window – and soon after, Meghan Hipwell, the woman Rachel watched, disappears. 

Rachel suspects foul play, and investigates. But the amateur sleuth is troubled. Could she be implicated? And is her judgement even reliable?

Mockingbird Theatre Company is staging the Canberra premiere of The Girl on the Train, a stage adaptation by Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel of Paula Hawkins’s bestselling 2015 psychological thriller, at Belconnen Arts Centre from 5 to 22 August.

Hawkins’s novel has sold more than 23 million copies worldwide, and was filmed in 2016. But director Chris Baldock hadn’t read or seen either before he read the play.

“I was intrigued. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I thought: if it elicits something out of me, I’ll do it. The ending comes as a surprise – but then it makes perfect sense. It was very clever writing when you know the outcome – like ‘Oh my god, that is very, very clever’, because I had no idea it was going in that direction. It fooled me.”

The challenge of directing the play, Baldock says, is being aware of what that audience is thinking at every moment – and what to make them think.

“Do we need to manipulate them here or not? It’s a very tricky balance. Every little gesture, every reaction, will be looked at. And if [the actors] don’t do the right reaction based on the situation and their character, they may give something away, or they may take people too far off in another direction. It’s quite hard, and I love it.

“It makes it fun for the audience, because they have to put on their thinking caps and go ‘What are we actually watching? What’s the reality, what is truth at this moment? What is really happening?’”

The cast is led by Morgan Heath-Williams as Rachel. The part is challenging, Baldock says, because the actor is onstage for the whole show. The action is seen from her perspective, and spectators should feel they are immersed in Rachel’s mind.

“She’s trying to put all the pieces together herself, so I want the audience to be with her on that journey. They’re surrounded by visuals, by projections going on all the time, and sound effects.”

YouTube influencer Susie J. Todd (whom Canberra Weekly interviewed five years ago) plays the alluring Meghan.

The other roles are tricky, Baldock says, “because our first perception of them is not what our last perception of them will be”. Almost everyone has something to hide: the missing woman’s husband (Timothy Cusack); Rachel’s own ex-husband (Robert Wearden); his new wife (Sabrina Fu); and her psychiatrist (Ankush Singh Khanchi). Only the unorthodox policeman, DI Gaskell (Paul Sweeney), doesn’t change. 

The set, Baldock says, is like a T-junction at a railway, and can transform at the speed of an express train from inside a suspect’s house to outside to an underpass.

“The acting is as realistic as possible, but the set is stylised. Audiences love that; they absolutely love using their imagination.”

The audience sits in quadrants around the set, the action taking place in the round. 

“They’re right in there. There’s nowhere to hide. There’s nowhere for anyone to hide.”

But will the truth hide itself from you? Come and pit your wits against mystery.

The Girl on the Train, adapted by Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel, directed by Chris Baldock, Mockingbird Studio, Belconnen Arts Centre, 5 to 22 August. Tickets: https://www.belcoarts.com.au/the-girl-on-the-train/