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Stars explained: * A production of no real merit
with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not
enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real
life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A
good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely
achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a
great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major
flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic
which lifts theatre to another plane. |
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The romance now arriving . . .
Alec and Laura messing about - and take that in any way you like - on the river Brief Encounter
Swan Theatre Amateur Company
**** THERE’S love’s
young bloom, and then there is love’s old bloom, and love’s middle aged
and rather illicit bloom and love’s faded bloom. In fact there is a lot
of blooming love in Brief Encounter. The original 1945 film,
directed by David Lean and starring Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard and
Stanley Holloway, became a classic. Set around 1938 it was a story very
much of its time, a time when a married woman, with a husband, home and
children – in that order – having merely the hint of an affair was a
scandal only just below treason and murder, and if the man was also
married with wife etc. then the shame was doubled. Noël Coward’s screenplay was adapted from his
1936 one act play Still Life and Emma Rice has used both film
and play for her 2008 adaptation which also introduces musical elements
with Coward songs, giving a sort of Oh What a Lovely War music
hall feel, as well as introducing black and white filmed portions
in what becomes a multimedia production. But despite the songs and the film clips the
greatest challenge to any production of the play is pace, or at least
trying to inject it. The original one act and its subsequent film were
slowly developing romantic dramas, hardly action packed, and Rice’s
version, despite its modern twists, is telling the same story. Essentially it is a tale of Laura, played with
nicely measured middle class manners by Louise Broad, who like many
women living comfortably in suburbia, heads into town to do her weekly
shopping, no doubt delivered, goes to a local hotel for lunch, visits
the cinema for a matinee then goes home to loving, if somewhat boring,
husband and children. Except one day, in the station tea room, she has
a speck of dirt in her eye which is removed by a passing doctor, Alec
Harvey, played by Tom Martin, who - a bit of type casting here - is a
doctor.
The simple act of kindness sets in train a
blossoming romance, two people who are in ordinary, comfortable if
uninspiring marriages who see a spark of something more exciting. It was
something certainly exciting to the theatre and cinema going public in
the 30s and 40s, where real-life tales of scandal could fill the pages
of newspapers for weeks. Tom gives us a very reasonable, and gentlemanly
would be adulterer – we are never quite sure whether their relationship
has been consummated – while Laura only seems to have real doubts and
regrets when they are disturbed after borrowing a flat from doctor
friend of Alec’s when she might have been mistaken for a prostitute as
she sneaks away. Whether that was their first visit there, nipping
nookie in the bud so to speak, or their last . . . who knows. She has already lied to friends about Alec which
has come surprisingly easy to her and she seems genuinely smitten, a
mother who has suddenly been given a chance of exciting romance, with
Alec, handsome, comfortably off, with working hours to suit, there is
always a suspicion at the back of the mind that perhaps this is not his
first time playing away from home. Behind the main lovers we have the station
lovebirds with Myrtle, who runs the Milford Junction tea shop, played –
and sung in sashaying style - by Michelle Whitfield, being romantically
pursued, which she does everything to encourage by Albert, one of the
station staff, played by Chris Isaac. Myrtle is prim and proper on the face of it, but
just as fun loving as Albert when she lets her permed hair down.
At the other end of station life’s rich tapestry
is Myrtle’s waitress Beryl who is chased by Stanley, the station cake
seller hawking his tray around the platforms, played by Nicholas
Snowden. Stanley spends much of his time trying to make Beryl laugh and
like him and even manages to arrange a full 15 minutes they can be
together by closing the tea shop few minutes early and getting
home a few minutes late – ah those magic moments of first loves. Beryl gives us a quite lovely rendition of
Coward’s Mad About The Boy by far the best-performed song of the
evening. The rest of the cast of ten provide incidental
characters, customers, friends and the like although per haps a few more
people could have been employed to frequent the station teashop at
times. While, sitting in his chair throughout, quietly
enjoying doing the crossword is Fred, Laura’s husband, a man with less
charisma than his cardigan, played by Chris Kingsley. He is oblivious to
the fact his wife is considering doing a bit of romantic freelancing, or
is he. His final lines of “You’ve been a long way away . . .Thank you
for coming back to me” could be taken as geographical or emotional. As we said, the story is of its time, hardly the
stuff of scandal today, and has the added problem of pace. The use of
film is clever as is the injection of songs, but with 17 scenes and a
slow moving story – this is a relationship developing on Thursday
afternoons over a period of weeks - there is a tendency for the play to
become episodic and a little stop start and director Janet Bright has
done well to keep it moving along at a reasonable lick with no undue
delays. The set is simple, functional and flexible and
Andrew Dunkley has produced some complimentary lighting. A final mention must go to musical director Lucas
Ball, who must have thought he was back in the silent cinema with
incidental music and song accompaniment on the piano, and for purists,
Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 which featured extensively in the
film, is there in the background. To 14-02-15 Roger Clarke
11-02-15 |
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