BBC Radio 4, 15 November 2012
A macabre tale with a beginning strongly reminiscent of The Lady
Vanishes, in which Justine Calmar (Paul Bown) a happily married man, encounters a strange person who asks him
to deliver a briefcase to an address in Lausanne. He makes several discoveries - first, the stranger disappears;
second, there is a dead body in the stranger's apartment; and third, that the briefcase contains a fortune in hard currency.
Justine flees from the apartment, and thereby condemns himself to a life of falsehood.
David Ian Neville's production was constructed as a savage morality-play, in which
Justine's decision to take the briefcase in the first place rendered him liable to commit more and more crimes.
If he had simply ignored the stranger, then his life might not have been ruined. As it was, Justine ended up by lying
to his wife, buying ever more extravagant gifts to cover up his lies, having an affair, and eventually contemplating a violent
demise.
Constructed largely as an interior monologue delivered direct to listeners by Justine,
interspersed with occasional conversational exchanges, The Venice Train was a thoroughly nasty tale well told.
