The Market Deeping Model Railway Club-Nottingham Playhouse.

Nottingham Playhouse produce some great new shows, which in a large part must be due their resident Artistic Director Adam Penford.

The Market Deeping Model Railway Club is a new play written by William Ivory, and this does disappoint. Market Deeping is a small town in south Lincolnshire, which many people will not have heard of or been to. This play is a true story of what happened to the model railway club in 2019, which made the national news following an act of vandalism.

Director, Adam Penford has chosen a great cast of actors who together take us to the model railway club and how the members of the club interact. There are some very funny lines that keep you laughing throughout the play, and you dont know where the time goes.

The first act is the period up until the Stamford Model Railway show 2019. The club has won awards for the best layout in the show for the previous two years. They are working on a new layout with the hope that they will again get the best in the show three years in a row and, by doing so, can keep the cup for good.

Most of the action takes in the club room, which has some great posters around promoting the introduction of the High Speed Train known as the journey shrinker due to its pointed nose and 125mph top speed. There is a lovely detail on the wall where when the club is in progress, a semaphore signal flicks from red to green.

It is so clear that the producer and actors have worked closely with the Market Deeping model railway club as the details are so acurate as We end act one where the club have set up their layout for the following day instead Stamford and the vandals enter the hall and wreck the exhibition.

Act two starts with them discovering the damage and how things proceed going forward and the fund raising which happened.

This play is so funny despite it being a sad story of vandalism and how years of work were undone overnight.

In addition to the staging of the club room, we see model trains projected onto the walls above the set, and many will reconise the trains from their childhood.

After the curtain, call two members of the current market Deeping model railway. Bring on a layout onto the front of the stage, and you can see it running.

This play is not just about model railways but about the relationships between the members and the pashion they have for model railways. It is a pity. it’s not touring the UK.

To top the evening off, there was an enthusiastic and well-deserved standing ovation.