Peter Viney's Blog

Adapted for the stage by Emma Rice
Directed by Douglas Rintoul
Set and costume design by Jess Curtis
Video design by Daniel Denton
Musical director and orchestrator Tom Self

Wiltshire Creative, New Wolsey Theatre, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre production

Thursday 6th April 2023, 14.15

CAST
Hanora Kamen – Laura Jesson
Jammy Kasongo- Dr Alec Harvey

Nicola Bryan – Myrtle Bagot + trumpet, clarinet
Samuel Morgan-Graham – Albert Godby + trombone, percussion, whistles etc
Tom Self- Fred Jesson / Stephen Lynn + piano, accordion, MD
Lucy Elizabeth Thorburn – Beryl + guitar
Luke Thornton – Stanley + double bass
Chioma Uma – Dolly Messiter + violin, piano

Brief Encounter was never a Noël Coward stage play but a 1945 classic film, directed by David Lean with a screenplay by Noël Coward, which in turn was based on his 1936 one act play, Still Life. The 1945 leads were Celia Johnson as Laura Jesson, and Trevor Howard as Dr Alex Harvey. The film was popular for years. I remember the Moderne (sic) Cinema near our house ran afternoon matinees, and in those far off sexist days they were aimed at women, and called The Weepies. My mum would go along with friends, all clutching hankies, and Brief Encounter was a perennial favourite.

Emma Rice adapted it in 2007 as a stage play for Kneehigh Theatre.

The programme neglects to add a note about her. I’ll correct that briefly. Emma Rice is one of the foremost English directors as well as a playwright. Her work for KneeHigh theatre was groundbreaking and there were co-productions with the RSC. This led to her appointment as Artistic Director of The Globe (2016 to 2018). She directed some of the very best versions of A Midsummer Nights Dream and Twelfth Night, and directed her own Romantics Anonymous in the Wanamaker Playhouse. It all got nasty. Even though her productions brought ‘exceptionally strong box office returns’ the Board hated her use of recorded music (more so, screwing speakers into the building’s woodwork) and electric lighting. In retrospect, she was a huge loss and The Globe’s quality has nose-dived since she left. The production of Imogen (Cymbeline renamed) may have been the break point when a semi-transparent plastic curtain covered The Globe’s woodwork. She went on to form Wise Children, and we saw her Malory Towers which is important here, because she obviously has a love of 1940s / 50s settings, and also taking an original (Noël Coward, Enid Blyton) and playing with it.

The most important factor on Noël Coward’s Brief Encounter is that it’s a template for a theatrical style. The style has been expressed at the Watermill Theatre near Newbury, a great favourite, many times. You have a small cast, eight to ten. They’re actors, musicians and singers. Some have been cast mainly because of acting, others mainly because of music, but they all do both, and play instruments. Often the two leads will just do one acting role each, but the other six (six here) do multiple parts as well as playing. Sometimes, I suspect an actor has learned just enough of an instrument to play a set piece in a couple of songs. Here we had three virtuoso musicians, Tom Self on piano and accordion, Chioma Uma on violin and piano, and Luke Thornton on double bass.

As we enter Salisbury Playhouse those three are playing on the upstairs landing. As we go on they walk around the auditorium, genuinely showing people to their seats and asking ‘Is everybody behaving in this row?’ They’re wearing maroon usher uniforms. When I worked in variety shows in the1960s the ushers and usherettes (OK, we used the gender-marked term) always wore that chosen colour. Watching the original 1945 film afterwards, I noted the usherette in the cinema scene had the same uniform. I also noticed that Laura and Alex laughed about ‘The Ladies Orchestra’ during their lunch in the Kardomah and wondered if that influenced the musician sequences.

Emma Rice’s stagecraft was always impeccable, and full credit to the director, Douglas Rintoul here. I’ve looked at pictures of past productions online, and this set and staging are unique to this production.

Salisbury has a slight semi-thrust front stage. Behind that is a circular area, surrounded by a semi-transparent curtain (Karen called it ‘a net curtain’ and that’s fair). The curtain is pulled back and forth and round and about. Behind the circular area is a raised area, which will serve as the station platform, Steven’s service flat etc.

As we walked out in the interval, a lady was saying to her friend, ‘It’s most unusual Noël Coward, isn’t it?’

Is it by Emma Rice, by Noël Coward, or by Noël Coward adapted by Emma Rice? I’d go for a full co-credit, though ‘The Master’ is not alive to give approval for that. We were so interested in the authorship, that we watched the 1945 David Lean film when we got home … we have the British Film Institute remastered David Lean Collection and it’s very crisp black and white. It had been a few years since we last saw it and memory was weak. Emma Rice has changed order a little (the final parting scene opens the film) and she has imported large sections of the original dialogue.

At time in the shows, all six “non-lead” roles will be in the uniforms and playing as a six piece (and a 4 piece, 5 piece, 3 piece, duo, solo). Is it a play with music or a musical? On percentages, I’d say a play with music.

The film has the romance between Mrs Bagot, who runs the station refreshment room… didn’t they call it later the station buffet? … and the ticket collector, Albert Godby. It has more prominence, extra scenes and is a little more explicit than the film. Noël Coward wanted to contrast the ‘working class’ (he was a terrible old snob) attitude to ‘a bit of slap and tickle’ with the stiff upper lip highly constrained Alex and Laura. Then we have Beryl, the assistant, and Stanley, the youth who sells refreshments from a tray on the station platform. They are extremely minor characters in the film, but much more important in the play- so obviously their dialogue is all new. The two soldiers scene is from memory word-for-word.

The scene after Alex falls in the water is more explicit on undressing than the film (though no, they do not go further). They don’t skip major film scenes … I thought just the one, where a policeman asks Laura why she’s been sitting on a bench in the rain for so long. They don’t do driving through the country or looking over a bridge either, but you may have guessed that.

It’s carefully costumed and set in the period. (One tiny flaw in the Persian carpet, Alex zips up his trousers. Not in 1945, he wouldn’t. He’d have struggled with fly buttons and killed the pace.)

A given of the style is everyone working flat out, with extremely fast costume and set changes. They’re so fast that you often wonder how they were possible. We noted that Tom Self, who plays Laura’s crossword obsessed husband, has grown a moustache to match the film’s character. The scenes flow fast, with the curtain swishing round, and music on the fore stage covering set changes. Everyone working takes in every aspect. At one point Mrs Bagot and Albert need their trumpet and trombone, and we can see through the gauze, that Jammy Kasongo, playing Dr Alex Harvey, is there handing them to them.

Video projection is a major addition, as it has been in most plays for the last two years. The back wall is used for projected shadowy trains. The gauze is used extensively, steam and smoke from the trains is one area, more importantly waves and water conjure up the clichés of 1940s and 1950s film, where waves breaking on a shoreline represented sexual ecstasy, It’s used when Laura is thinking about “it” and she waves her arms back in abandon. (The waves are in the play text).

The songs are well sung and very well-played given a six piece (and I’d guess three of the six are the “real musicians”). Obviously the full orchestra at The Bridge Theatre last week is not a fair sound comparison, nor are the technical possibilities. I wanted to know the song titles. I think most or all were Noël Coward (e.g. Mad About The Man), and some of the piano interludes sound like the Rachmaninov pieces on the film soundtrack. Certainly they are the same mood.

I didn’t think it got the audience reaction it deserved … but it was a Salisbury matinee and a mainly elderly audience who are unlikely to leap to their feet whistling and shouting ‘Yeah!’ I wanted to but would have been isolated.

I want to give it five, but then I’d have to find a six for The Bridge. So four.

****

PROGRAMME

I’m trying my best to find a negative about this, Ah! The programme. It has good cast bios. No note of running length, and has lifted a very basic Noël Coward bio from the internet. Then, for me a great sin, it doesn’t list the songs. As a semi-musical it should. We want to know so we can find the songs again. It’s a moral obligation to credit writers and publishers – it’s probably a legal one too.

SEE ROBERT W’s list of the songs in the previous Watermill production below under Comments.

Then it has no notes on Emma Rice. That’s necessary. See above.

THE TOUR CONTINUES:

New Wolsey Ipswich 26 April – 13 May
Yvonne Arnaud, Guildford 16 May-20 May
Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds 23-27 May
Northern Stage, Newcastle Upon Tyne 31 May – 3 June

CRITICS
Annette J Beveridge, Salisbury Journal ****
Experience Salisbury ****
Theatre & Arts Review ****

LINKS ON THIS BLOG

NOËL COWARD

• Blithe Spirit by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal 2010 (Alison Steadman)
• Blithe Spirit, by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal 2019 (Jennifer Saunders)
• Blithe Spirit FILM 2021 (Judi Dench)
• Fallen Angels, by Noël Coward, Salisbury Playhouse
• Hay Fever by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal
• Relative Values by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal
• This Happy Breed by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal
• Present Laughter, by  Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal, 2003 Rik Mayall (retrospective)
• Present Laughter by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal 2106, Samuel West
• Present Laughter by Noël Coward, Chichester 2018, Rufus Hound
• Present Laughter by Noël Coward, Old Vic 2019, Andrew Scott
• Private Lives by Noël Coward, Nigel Havers Theatre Company, 2021, Chichester
• Private Lives, by Noël Coward, Donmar Warehouse, London 2023
• Noël Coward’s Brief Encounter, by Emma Rice, Salisbury Playhouse, 2023
• The Vortex, by Noël Coward, Chichester Festival Theatre 2023

EMMA RICE
Malory Towers, on tour, Exeter 2019
Romantics Anonymous, Wanamaker Playhouse 2017
Tristan & Yseult, Kneehigh, Globe 2017
Twelfth Night, Globe 2017
A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Globe 2016
The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk, by Daniel Jamieson, Kneehigh / Bristol Old Vic