Two from Roundabout Theatre Company

Brief Encounter, a play about forbidden love, is based upon Noel Coward’s one act play Still Life (1936). In 1945, it was made into a popular film that remains a romantic classic to this day. Knowing of Coward’s loosely hidden homosexuality, a modern viewer can’t help but read into this show, Coward’s own feelings about the pain and angst of a secret hidden love.

In the Kneehigh Theater's production presented by Roundabout Theatre Company, the couple is more conventional. A British homemaker, Laura (Hannah Yelland), meets Alec (Tristan Sturrock), a married doctor , when she gets something in her eye. Each Thursday, Laura comes to town to do errands and catch a movie, and each week on Thursday, Alec comes to work at the local hospital. Laura has a husband who is distant and two children (cleverly depicted by the use of life-size dolls), which enables the audience to laugh and not feel any righteous anger at Laura for betraying them. The two begin to meet each week and eventually they fall in love. Realizing that their love is impossible, Alex leaves for South Africa to work in a hospital.

The play combines elements of Noel Coward’s screenplay with song, dance and a talented ensemble of characters who sing, dance and cavort around the pair. In contrast to the well-bred couple who is tormented by their forbidden love, the lower class people around them are surreptitiously pairing up and having relationships.

The ensemble actors play all the other characters, including Laura’s husband, some busybody ladies and soldiers. Coward’s music, which feels extraneous and often irrelevant, detracts from the story, but it also minimizes the tragedy. As the lovers prepare to say goodbye with a final, passionate kiss, an intrusive neighbor suddenly joins them and begins chattering. Alec boards his train to go to his new position in South Africa. Suddenly, Laura rushes to look over the bridge, contemplating suicide.