Last Updated on February 28, 2026
Full Steam Ahead for Turnage’s The Railway Children at Glyndebourne
4.0 out of 5.0 starsWhen Mark-Anthony Turnage announces a new opera, ears prick up. Few living composers have such a knack for turning the familiar into the unsettling, mixing spiky jazz-inflected rhythms with sly humour and aching lyricism. His latest project, The Railway Children, is taken from Edith Nesbit’s classic Edwardian children’s tale. Turnage and his librettist, the director-writer Rachael Hewer, have re-engineered the tale into a family-friendly Cold War thriller set in 1984. Think Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan dancing to Prince and Culture Club.
The Railway Children premiered at Glyndebourne last night as part of the opera house’s exciting Autumn Season, with an upcoming transfer to London’s Southbank Centre. Until this year, Turnage was best known for his opera Anna Nicole, first performed in 2011, which told the salacious story of Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith. There was a previous family opera, Coraline, taken from the eponymous Neil Gaiman fantasy novel at the Barbican in 2018. But it was in February this year, with Festen at the Royal Opera, inspired by the 1998 Danish black comedy-drama film directed by Thomas Vinterberg, that the composer had his greatest triumph. I described it as ‘the finest English language opera for many years’.
Readers of a certain age will remember the charming 1970 film version of The Railway Children starring the 17-year-old Jenny Agutter as Bobbie, the eldest child, Sally Thomsett, who was 20, playing an 11-year-old, and the wonderful Bernard Cribbins as the stationmaster Mr Perks. The opera reunites audiences with the much-loved story of three siblings exiled to a country cottage after their father is mysteriously taken away. However, Turnage and Hewer have transplanted the opera to the pre-Glasnost era as well as modernising the characters to make them feel more contemporary. It’s more John le Carré than Hovis ad with a touch of the real-life Georgi Markov case.
Director Stephen Langridge, Glyndebourne’s artistic director, and designer Nicky Shaw have made good use of the opera house’s 69-bar automated flying system to create a series of inventive sets that appear in boxes on or above the stage. It allows for filmic jump cuts, which add to the headlong momentum of the piece.
There is the opening scene of a government office swamped in a sea of filing cabinets.
The family sitting room is more Cath Kidston than Cath Kidston.
The train station has a Wes Anderson-esque symmetricallity and the famous bridge flies around at alarming angles with just chestnut posting to hang on to.
Lighting designer Mark Jonathan and video designer Max White have conspired artfully to create spaces for the drama that are more abstract in nature. There is an effective and repeated use of silhouetting, and computer-generated swirling, grid backdrops return in different colours to frame the action. The staging of the iconic red-flag-waving scene in which the children avert a major train crash is a monumental high-stakes coup-de-theatre which I won’t spoil, save to say that it had the audience on their seat edges. Bravo to the production team.
Lanky British bass Edward Hawkins captures the reserved Englishness of the children’s father, David, as well as the quiet desperation of the Russian journalist Mr Tarpolski with a pair of well-nuanced characterisations.
Mezzo-soprano Rachael Lloyd is the mother, Cathy, who in this production is much more of an activist than in the film and book. Lloyd’s full-bodied vocal delivery brings to life the character, swept up in the campaign to free her husband and leaving the children to their own devices.
Glyndebourne’s Autumn Season is fast becoming a showcase for fresh voices, and The Railway Children doesn’t buck that trend. The characters of the three children around whom the opera is centred are played by and written for adults. Whilst this may be alienating for a younger audience, it certainly provided a showcase for three up-and-coming singers. Welsh Soprano Jessica Cale, first prize winner of the Kathleen Ferrier Award, plays Bobbie, the organiser and the only one of the kids to know of her father’s fate. Cale looks much older than the book’s 12-year-old character, but could pass as an older teen. She brings a dramatic intensity to her powerful soprano that lays bare the emotional damage done to her character, having to take responsibility for her siblings as well as saving the day at the opera’s climax. Cale brings to life her character’s discomfort with the attention showered on the hero children, and her “Daddy, my Daddy!” uttered on her father’s return gave everyone in the house a tear in their eyes.
Matthew McKinney made a good fist of the character of Peter, the awkward middle child. Gangly and uncomfortable in his own skin and full of growing pains, the Kathleen Ferrier award-winning singer has a gorgeous lyric tenor voice that will shine in more adult roles. Of South Korean heritage, petite soprano Henna Mun, a Jerwood Young Artist in 2024, takes on the role of Phyllis, the youngest of the three children. Decked out in period-appropriate mauve leg warmers whilst clutching a teddy bear, Mun, a winner of the 2024 John Christie Award at the Glyndebourne Festival, had a couple of moments to shine vocally and took them with alacrity. I want to hear her singing the Mozart parts her glistening voice is so suited for.
Mezzo-soprano Bethany Horak-Hallett is Cathy’s friend, Yolanda, bringing support to her friend and biscuits for the always-hungry children. Another strong soprano, I wonder if the two adult female characters needed stronger vocal delineation, as their timbres and Turnage’s writing were very similar.
Irish tenor Gavan Ring gives a touchingly comic turn as Mr Perks, with more than a touch of Bernard Cribbins’ look and character. With his northern accent and grainy vocal warmth, this was a delightful performance that brought humanity to the stage, counter-balancing the murky world of counter-espionage.
British baritone James Cleverton delivers a bluff Sir Tommy Crawshaw, replacing the character of the old man in the book. A retired star footballer and a true working-class hero, Crawshaw has leveraged his on-field influence into the higher echelons of society. Based on a real-life figure, a relation of Rachael Hewer, the footballing hero quietly orchestrates the denouement of the narrative with quiet authority.
From the opening train whistle, Turnage’s score is often lean and dramatic but also unafraid to stray into broad comedy. I particularly enjoyed a pair of slightly bonkers songs about the pleasures of fast food and the green used in British Rail’s livery. But there is always a pulsating rhythmic impetus that drives the composition forward, just as with Richard Rodney Bennett’s The Murder on the Orient Express, cited by the composer as an influence on this piece. Written for a 16-piece chamber group of instrumentalists, the score’s impressive rhythmic drive is sonically explosive, even without a full percussion rig, and full of jeopardy. With low wind and trombone flurries, slapped double basses and harp strums, there is a dynamic and filmic quality to the writing. There are also some gorgeous vocal ensemble pieces with Turnage’s trademark unsettling polyphony affording multiple narratives running concurrently.
Tim Anderson, conducting The Glyndebourne Sinfonia and Glyndebourne Chorus, brought a tremendous sense of impetus to the score, creating moments of high drama, emotion and comic sentimentality.
I would have loved to have seen Turnage’s The Railway Children when I was a cynical 12-year-old, already a battle-weary veteran of many Hans Werner Henze operas. Brought up on Biggles and Swallows and Amazons, I would have been rooting for the kids. On the opening night, there were just a few children in the house, but with upcoming school performances, we will soon find out if young people today will buy into a period charm that actually feels more early 1960s than the 80s with its Thatcher-driven industrial strife. In a TikTok world where they are micro-targeted with AI-curated content and advertising, the opera may reflect an England that no longer exists. What is certain is that the opera further cements Turnage’s reputation as the leading English-language opera composer of his generation.
Public performances
Saturday 1 November, 2 pm and 7 pm
Glyndebourne performances for local schools
Tuesday 4 November
Thursday 6 November
Glyndebourne
Lewes,
East Sussex,
BN8 5UU
© Glyndebourne Productions Ltd. Photography by Richard Hubert Smith
There is also a performance at the Southbank Centre on 8 November 2025 at 6.30 pm.
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