Hearts Briefly
September 29th, 2010 Posted in Theatre | No Comments »Brief Encounter | Studio 54 | Through December 5
The simplest way to describe Brief Encounter, Roundabout’s latest production which opened last night at Studio 54, is to call it a refreshing piece of theatre. In a sense, the baton has been passed to this Emma Rice-directed work from last season’s Sherie Rene Scott vehicle Everyday Rapture, from one evening of legitimately touching escapism to the next. It is worth noting that both stagings were imports previously presented by separate companies, but it is not worth harping on. Judging by the smiles on the faces of the exuberant crowd that danced with the cast as they jammed their way through Top 40 hits on the upright bass and the accordion after the curtain call to a repertoire that included both Sister Sledge and Journey, the city’s largest non-profit theatre is beginning to re-establish itself as a curator of solidly pleasing work. (Insert gasp here.)
Transplanted from Cornwall’s Kneehigh Theatre, Brief Encounter was a 1936 one-act Noel Coward play called Still Life that was made into a 1945 film, also penned by Coward and given the new moniker, that here retains the feeling of a noir melodrama now doused in a generous dose of old fashioned stagecraft with a side of humor that you’re not quite sure belongs but you’re glad showed up to the party.
And a deliciously sweet party it is. The economic nine-member company (no covers waiting in the wings… somebody explain that to me) doubles as the house band, delighting the audience with Coward-penned ditties before the auditorium lights dim, signaling the start of the action and daring the audience to wager they are somewhere far removed from the iPad age. The crushed red velvet curtain is raised and a movie projector screen tells us we will be witnessing a tale for the incurably romantic. This type of self-referential wink to the viewer usually renders such a declaration moot (if you’re telling me I’m going to be swept up in this story, I’m going to do everything not to be), but it’s difficult to keep yourself from rooting for the two ill-fated lovers by the story’s end.
The duo in question is Alec (Tristan Sturrock) and Laura (Hannah Yelland), both married with a couple of rugrats at home. They jump from their seats in the audience at the top of the one-act affair (get it?!) to meld into the story that is being told on the movie screen. Yelland walks into the screen through a bit of theatrical wizardry, smartly rendered by set designer Neil Murray and projection designers Jon Driscoll and Gemma Carrington. Rice gives us an immediate signal as if to say we will not be simply watching the story of these two lovers unfold – we will be traveling their ill-fated path alongside them.
It’s easy to lose track of how many times Alec and Luara say goodbye to each other or look positively vexed they can’t boink each other again, partly because it seems to happen approximately every 20 seconds and partly because there’s a good deal of non-linear moments in the piece. They literally end up repeating themselves at times. Their goodbye is ended initially as Laura steps into the filmic version of her tepid life and repeated verbatim at the end when it leads into a disturbing image of Laura perched above the train track on which Alec is departing and then relayed quickly to her normal prison living room. The character’s inner emotions (in this case, heartbreak and defeat) are visually summoned as a tangible staging devices and story constructions. Alec and Laura are unable to break out of their ambiguous status quo existences just like we can’t shake the loop of their story. Likewise, the two swing from chandeliers amidst a shower of glitter when they feel there is nowhere their love can’t take them.
Throughout, the stagecraft choices are satisfying, borderline textbook yet visually captivating. After seeing this adaptation, it’s hard to imagine sitting through a more traditional take on the original Coward play or film. That show would be lucky to find backers and would be all but obsolete in the current theatrical landscape. To put it bluntly, Rice is giving us a rote melodrama with a little bit of spice, presumably because we can’t (or won’t) stomach the real thing.
Which leads me to wonder, theatrical flashiness aside, are the actions and reactions of the lovers presented here true to life for pre-WWII society? I wonder something similar when I watch an episode of “I Love Lucy” (not that I do that regularly) and Ethel offers a standard idiom of the day… “And how!”… “That’s the bee’s knees”… You know the like. Did people really talk like that back then or was that what the entertainment culture suggested people talk like back then? Did men and women fall so deeply in love with each other back in the day that their only recourse was to have a super depressing break-up like characters in a Noel Coward play? My gut tells me they did not, but the fact that this type of example was the standard entertainment fare that people attended ostensibly to escape their probably just-as-sucky love lives strikes me as fascinating. Are the characters in Brief Encounter indicative of the way lovers behaved in the 1930s or are they stylized caricatures set up to teach a lesson about life and the course of love?
I would tend to side with the latter with that lesson being somewhere in the neighborhood of “True, powerful love is only available in fleeting doses and all other imitators either lead to discontent or were never truly powerful to begin with.” Take for example the other two couples in the show. The seasoned pros Myrtle (Annette McLaughlin) and Albert (Joseph Alessi) might take frequent rolls in the hay, but the lady is still left to lament she has always been “No Good at Love.” And the cute-as-a-button young guns Stanley (Gabriel Ebert) and Beryl (Dorothy Atkinson) might effuse carefree whimsy, but we have no indication that their connection is anything that will stand the test of time. The meatiest couple we have to rely on is Alec and Laura who confess their undying love for one another and yet choose a path that keeps them separated forever.
Isn’t it odd that this is what we like to see in our romances? Something sad? Something a little bit crappy? Doesn’t it remind us that, yes, our life is crappy too and man does it feel good to see someone else having such a bad time because, hey, that’s what life is like anyway. I submit for consideration Exhibit (A) Tony and Maria. Homeboy and his lady had a series of unfortunate dates and then one ended up dead. If you left West Side Story and these two skipped off into the sunset together, you would feel slighted and ask your theatergoing companion why you just sat through the musical equivalent of a Tom Hanks / Meg Ryan movie. Romances that end happily usually feel like artificial fluff. Romances that end sadly are harder to stomach but are easier to label as realistic examples of life and arguably have a more potent message to tell.
Whatever you decide the take-away emotional value of this particular romance to be, what is not debatable is the way Rice and her cast make such a darkly tinged story so comically fertile. Let’s face it – these kids are doing some pretty bad things. Last time I checked, adultery got you on Santa’s naughty list. Yet, in most scenes where the heaviness of the situation threatens to dampen the mood, we’re immediately excused from the awkwardness by vaudeville shtick. In the best example, Alec and Laura are spotted mid-rendezvous by a pair of well-to-do socialites (McLaughlin and Atkinson in top form). Laura, unfazed, is giving us “Don’t mess with me I’m a disturbed Katherine Hepburn-type” through the whole ordeal, Alec is giving us an impish grin and the socialites are played with reckless comic abandon down to their feather-bottomed mops that double as yapping dogs. I do not mind being completely entertained by the scene. I find it intriguing, though, that we must have our melodrama served medium well with a side of humor.
Ultimately, Brief Encounter’s whimsical humor and creative staging elements are a joy to watch unfold. It works on a couple of levels: (1) Tourists looking for a show that isn’t completely sold out will be able to access Rice’s visual dazzle and leave the bits of melancholy they didn’t bargain for at the door. (2) Theatre enthusiasts will find enough meat to dissect in the subtext and still come back wanting more. I needed a second viewing before I was fully comfortable piecing together the puzzle that is the timeline of Alec and Laura’s dissolution.
Most delectably, the music in the show provides a fitting soundtrack to the multiple shades of enchantment and despair the story offers. The jaunty “Any Little Fish,” sung with simple grace by Ebert and Atkinson, is just plain cute and the brooding “Go Slow Johnny,” sung by Damon Daunno is arguably the highlight of the entire show. Equal parts sexy and forlorn, it gives new life to a tune originally penned by Coward but since forgotten by most. Which is really quite fitting when you think of Rice’s accomplishment on the whole.
The true genius of the Robert Lopez/Jeff Marx score is that it offers us a delightful slice of non-escapism. That is, the mounting bills and problems at work we are trying to get away from by going to the theater are blissfully lampooned right on stage and we somehow feel better for it. Nowhere is this more evident for me than in the story of 
Four years. If that. That’s how long it has been since the last Broadway revival of Gypsy closed at the Shubert Theatre. Is it really necessary, then, that yet another mounting of the Jule Styne musical arrives on the boards, this time with Patti LuPone in the role of infamous stage mother Rose?