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Coward's 'Brief Encounter' a Lively Stage-Screen Hybrid

by Zoe Strimpel
Sun, 2 Mar 2008 at 2:23 PM

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It is easy to forget that "Brief Encounter" — the classic 1945 film about a love affair between two married people who meet at a train station — was an adaptation of a one-act play, written by Noël Coward in 1936. What better reminder, then, than the new production at Cinema on the Haymarket, off Piccadilly?

The Cinema is a big hall, with old-fashioned seating and balconies, and tea sets scattered about the foyer and bars as decoration. Converted to theatrical purpose (and thus returned to its roots, as it was designed for live performances and films), it works wonderfully as a stage for Coward's play. We sat in one of the balconies, munching popcorn and drinking wine as the show unfurled.

This much-praised production slides remarkably between stage and screen, with actors periodically walking into a curtain-like screen onto which filmic images of themselves are projected. It is an odd mixture of farce and tragedy; at times the studied schmaltz (Laura and Alec swooping backward in unison in a kind of faint, as the noise of an oncoming train booms out over Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto, for example) threatens to derail the feel of the thing.

But ultimately, the strong singing and dancing and the slapstick element work. (The production company, Kneehigh Theatre, is expert at this style, and used it to great effect in a celebrated production of "The Bacchai" in 2004.) After all, life at a train station café goes on, regardless of a Romeo and Juliet situation unfolding in its midst. Indeed, the narcissism of a serious love affair is more interestingly brought into relief when it takes place among the humorous and mundane.

And so we are pleasantly buoyed along through the vaudeville and the comedy, but still absorbed in the parallel story of two people with families, consciences, and a strong desire to overturn both for each other. A real treat — though if you've seen the movie too many times, the desire to keep comparing the play with the film could be a spoiler. One lover of the film who went to see this play was disappointed and irked by how frequently the melodrama is broken up by comedy and flamboyance. If you don't want to dissociate "Brief Encounter" from your box of Kleenex, this might not be the show for you. For everyone else, it's a breath of fresh air and well worth a viewing.

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