“Forgive me, sir. But you look at me as if you have some dread of me…as if you have seen a ghost.”

 

Five years before Charles Dickens died, he was involved in an horrific train accident. Owing to a signalman’s negligence, ten were killed and forty injured. Dickens was traumatised by this incident, lost his voice for two weeks afterwards and avoided trains with phobic anxiety thereafter. This caused him to write The Signalman, a powerful and haunting short story.

 

Award-winning Writer Alfie James has teamed up with award-winning disabled Actor Mark Beer and up and Actor Ben Kinsman to create a new audio-play adaptation of the classic ghost story. When the narrator of Dicken’s masterful ghost story climbs down into a lonely railway siding on a whim, he finds himself in ‘as solitary and dismal a place as ever he has ever seen. His misgivings turn out to be justified, for the signalman who lives there has a dark and alarming secret which will change the narrators life forever.

 

This is a special free stripped back and raw lockdown performance recorded and edited from their living rooms via Zoom.

 

Cast:

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Older Journalist – Mark Beer

Journalist – Ben Kinsman

And Alfie James As

“The Signalman”

 

Written by Charles Dickens

Adapted & Directed by Alfie James

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Key themes: #Ghoststory #isolation #uncertainty #fear #madness #trust #respect