YORK Theatre Royal's Olivier Award-winning production of E Nesbit's The Railway Children will be released on DVD on Monday (OCTOBER 24) by Genesius Pictures and Spirit Entertainment.

Filmed in the Signal Box Theatre during the Theatre Royal's residency at the National Railway Museum last year, Ross MacGibbon's stage-to-screen version was first shown at cinemas nationwide over Easter.

York playwright Mike Kenny's stage adaptation was directed by Theatre Royal artistic director Damian Cruden, whose cast featured Martin Barrass as station porter Albert Perks, alongside Rozzi Nicholson-Lailey, Beth Lilly, Izaak Cainer, Andrina Carroll and Robert Angell. Martin, by the way, returned to York last Friday to continue his recuperation after eight weeks in hospital in Leeds following a motorcycle accident. Welcome home, Martin, what good news that is.

The film was directed by the International Emmy Award-winning Ross MacGibbon, whose stage-to-screen adaptations have included Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake, Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest with David Suchet and Shakespeare’s Measure For Measure at The Globe Theatre, London.

MacGibbon and his production team navigated Cruden's thrilling and clever staging, which utilised mobile platforms, props and rail carts on tracks and a real steam engine, as featured in Lionel Jeffries'1970 film.

The Railway Children follows the story of Bobbie (played by Rozzi Nicholson-Lailey), Peter (Izaak Cainer) and Phyllis (Beth Lilly), three children whose lives change dramatically when their father (Robert Angell) is mysteriously taken away. The children and their mother (Andrina Carroll), now penniless, are forced to move from London to a cottage in rural Yorkshire. There they befriend the railway porter, Albert Perks (Martin Barrass) and embark on a magical journey of discovery, friendship and adventure, but the mystery remains: where is Father and is he ever coming back?

Kenny's adaptation was first staged by the Theatre Royal at the NRM in 2008 and 2009, then opened at Waterloo Station in the former Eurostar terminal in July 2010, where it won the 2011 Olivier Award for Best Entertainment, before opening in Toronto, Canada, in 2011 in a temporary theatre built at the base of CN Tower in Roundhouse Park. The Railway Children then had its third summer at the NRM in 2015 and continues to run at London's King's Cross Theatre,where both Martin Barrass and fellow Theatre Royal pantomime stalwart Suzy Cooper have appeared in the production.

The U certificate DVD runs for 134 minutes with 25 minutes of special features to accompany the 109-minute film.