Adaptation: Emma Rice from Noel Coward’s Still Life
Director: Elizabeth Newman
Original Music: Stu Barker
We’ve all done it, fallen in love with a perfect stranger across a train carriage or on the last bus home. But for many, it’s a sliver of time blown into life together, compacting into a fleeting moment without more than a word uttered between us.
Growing the passing fancy of a train-station chance encounter, Elizabeth Newman directs an intimate expansion of Emma Rice’s adaptation,Brief Encounter. The significant charm of Rice’s adaptation of David Lean’s 1945 cinematic expansion of Coward’s one-act play, is just how magnificently it captures the mundanity and simplistic nature of it all – the moments of life which, though complicated, tell us everything we need to know about ourselves.
Brief Encounteroccurs in the peripherals of the world around, amidst the jutting and trundling carousels of Jen McGinley’s sliding set design. The entirety of the action could be an over-heard conversation as you scarf down something hot between delayed trains, but for this very English affair between a doctor and cored housewife, this common-place meeting freezes momentum, just for a moment, while the rest of the world just carries on. The bubbling rush of excitement which conveys the driving passion for this all emerges from a glance, though be it one where Alec (a doctor) removes a piece of detritus from Laura’s eye. The pair catch one another’s gaze.
It’s instantaneous. A remarkable statement to Kirsty Stuart and Matthew Trevannion’s performances is that no time is necessary to forge that raw connection Laura and Alec ignite. The authenticity of their passion mingles in every day more and more as the production furthers careens towards its inevitable conclusion. In the real world, the elements of devotion, fidelity and guilt have a stronger pull than that of a bursting passion, shackling the pair to responsibilities and reality more so than their fervour. The niceties and politesse are to be always observed in this English affair, we’ll have none of that American melodrama nonsense stirred into the mix.
Laura in the afternoon, Dubois in the evening, Stuart’s sublime talents to hone into the psyche and dimensions of repression, passion, and the humanity of it all truly make her one of Scotland’s finest. The gradual breaking-down of Laura’s affair is played as more severe with the audience given the appearance of Laura’s husband, played with a sympathetic, if apathetic, charm by Keith MacPherson.
Striking up with the band, MacPherson, along with Kristin Weichen Wong, Joseph Tweedale, Matthew Churcher, and the always wonderfully musical Rachael McAllister, continue the Pitlochry use of an on-stage live band who often dip in and out of the stage action, McAllister and Macpherson more than most. Stu Barker’s original music (with a few Coward favourites) for the piece maintains the momentum, though at under two hours, it’s a nicely compact drama, always benefitting from Weichen Wong’s piano work, and a few choice vocals – including a touching solo from Trevannion.
Slipping into the night, McGinley’s set trundles in and out, capturing the setting sublimely while maintaining a solid sense of structure. It does a marvellous thing with time – where everything halts under the station clock whenever Laura and Alec are together, only returning to the norm once their meetings cease, the station tearoom or domestic settings springing back into reality. – a gorgeous touch.
With an intimate and all too familiar tone, Newman captures the subtlety and purity of Rice’s adaptation. It rejects a gaudier melodramatic comedy and instead places faith in performances from leads Stuart and Trevannion with a musical ensemble. Occasional bouts of humour are played a touch heavily to the audience (a nudge and wink aren’t far behind), but otherwise continuesBrief Encounters’place as an everyday example of brilliant twentieth-century pieces of romantic theatre.
Runs until 29 September 2023 | Image: Fraser Band
The Reviews Hub Score
Intimate & Familiar
