Callum Mackay’s The Last Train to Madeleine knows there’s nothing more fulfilling or as soul-destroying than first love.

Anxious nights overthinking missed kisses, stolen glances at recess, loaded silences you regret never breaking … It’s a classic rite of passage that for many of us is doomed to be remembered alongside that of many other firsts: a first job,  apartment, date, trip overseas, or graduation.

And, of course, that first heart break.

It’s the stuff of ‘magic, nostalgia and dreams’, as Mackay writes in the show’s program, and this newest 80-minute two-hander from Fever 103 Theatre has sprinkles of all three. Sumptuous design and stellar performances from a talented cast make it an eye-catching staging with moments of real theatrical magic. But the show is ultimately derailed by an unfocused script that too often trades in potential depths for easy sentimentality and cliché.

Eddie Orton and Ruby Maishman in The Last Train to Madeline. Photo © Liv Morison

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