Theater Review: "Brief Encounter"

If you've ever been in love, like hopelessly, maddeningly, extraordinarily in love, then Noel Coward's "Brief Encounter," will feel all too familiar. Because who hasn't, when they were in a relationship, felt they were flying, or drowning, or just no longer able to be sensible?

Now take those feelings and turn it up 10 notches and you'll have "Brief Encounter" where the lovers actually do fly. The play, presented by the Roundabout Theater Company, is based on the film also written by Noel Coward and adapted for the stage by Emma Rice. It is about two married people, Laura and Alec, who are British and living in 1938. They meet serendipitously at a train station cafe, and fall in love, only to have to part forever at the end. Yet both are changed significantly by the affair.

And no, I'm not spoiling anything for you, you'll find at the end at the beginning of the play. This affair is not the tawdry, Thomas Crown type. It's filled with that almost-Victorian sensibility which allows only touching above the waist and closed-mouth kissing. Passion is conveyed through knowing glances, heartbreak through a touch on the shoulder, and love is shown through very creative stage theatrics (see photo above).

Lead actors Joseph Alessi and Dorothy Atkinson perfectly walk the line in Alec and Laura's simultaneous passion yet avid restraint for the sake of family and respectability. Even those sitting in the mezzanine could feel the thick tension that could never be consummated and Alessi and Atkinson are authentic in their frustrations.

The play contains film elements, such as black and white film projections, which is effectively used to add another layer of reality and to allow the actors to interact with something other than stage props.

It is also part-musical, with Coward's songs interspersed throughout the affair, sung onstage by a rag-tag team of singers, who also double as characters in the stage, in a style that is part cabaret, and part Greek chorus.

Two other couples, Myrtle (Annette McLaughlin) and Albert (Joseph Alessi), Beryl (Dorothy Atkinson) and Stanley (Gabriel Ebert), serves as the more humorous foils to Alec and Laura's relationship. While Alec and Laura are cautious in their affair, the other two couples around them freely fall head over heels and are uncaring on how wonderfully ridiculous they look. It's the different facets of love and each affair is multidimensional and pleasurable to watch.

I can almost compare "Brief Encounter" to the "39 Steps," since there are some moments that are consciously theatrical - such as scene on a boat which changes from a romantic film projected to a boat pushed by other actors onstage. In fact, the entire production is filled to the brim with stage mechanic seams so you can see every single effect the occur.

Yet while in "39 Steps," it was played for laughs, in "Brief Encounter," it allowed the audience to be kept far removed from the action, just like in a film, and see the tale not as a similitude of reality, but as a parable of love.

Love, in all of its passionate, exhilarating, hilarious and inconvenient forms. So go get a ticket to "Brief Encounter" and just let the emotions wash over you. Don't think, don't analyze, just - like in any wonderful love affair - feel it.

And be sure to come early and stay a little after to hear some live period music as well as period takes on contemporary songs (they played a 30's version of "Don't Stop Believin'" as I was leaving the theater)

Details
What: "Brief Encounter" presented by the Roundabout Theatre Company
When: Through Jan. 2
Where:
Studio 54
254 West 54th Street, New York City, NY
(212) 719-1300
Discount:
For any theater-goer age 18 to 35 can get any show at the Roundabout for only $20 or less! Just sign up for HIPTIX.