REVIEW: Brief Encounter, The Cinema on the Haymarket, London

11:03am Friday 18th July 2008

WITH Kneehigh Theatre, you're always in for a treat.

Their sumptuous reinvention of the classic wartime romance A Matter of Life and Death ran to great acclaim in the National Theatre in 2007. Now, they're entrancing audiences with another period tearjearker, Brief Encounter, which is one of the most unusual evenings out the West End has to offer.

If you're looking for something a little more ambitious than just a song and dance affair, or straight play, then this is just the ticket. It's a sometimes bizarre, often brilliant, and always entertaining combination of drama, romance, heightened theatrics and multimedia. You'll certainly leave Brief Encounter with plenty to talk about, including the marvellous moments when actors on stage move magically onto a huge screen.

Kneehigh's talented artistic director Emma Rice has added such wonderful nuances to the bare bones structure of the 1945 film we all know so well, combining it with Noel Coward's 1938 stage play Still Life.

Potential lovers Alec (Tristan Sturrock) and Laura (Naomi Frederick) do still meet at a train station, he stepping in heroically to remove some dust from her eye, but the token employees of said station have become, in Rice's version, a whole cast of fantastic supporting characters. All of whom sing and play instruments, making this, on top of everything else, an actor-muso production.

It was a masterstroke to set Brief Encounter in the Cinema on the Haymarket, just below Piccadilly Circus, which was originally built in 1926, and is where the film treatment premiered. Period ushers stand downstairs to greet you, appropriate music sets the tone pre curtain up, and Alec and Laura actually begin the show sitting in the front row, which makes the audience feel wonderfully involved with everything that's going on.

It's not often that you're treated to cucumber sandwiches and buns by the characters at the interval, but that's what happens here!

Even though this production is based on other, predominantly cinematic, material, Kneehigh's production is resolutely theatrical. When Alec and Laura first meet, the effect of their chemistry causes each to fall over backwards, caught by the timely arms of another member of the cast. At the peak of their romance, there's an absolutely fabulous moment where they literally swing from chandeliers in the centre of Neil Murray's station set, which moves from platform to living room to projector screen in a flash.

*Brief Encounter's director Emma Rice will guest star as Myrtle until August 18. Tickets, and details of special offers, are available now from the box office on 0871 230 1562 or online at www.seebriefencounter.com

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