“Brief Encounter” is satisfying quickie theater

“A Brief Encounter”
WHERE: Guthrie Theater, 818 S. Second St.
WHEN: Feb. 11 – April 3
TICKETS: $29 - $65

All over the world tonight, you can hear the sound of lovers in love. But what happens when they aren’t in love with the one they married? This conundrum is the basis of the Guthrie Theater’s latest production, “Brief Encounter,” which is part poignant 1930s musical, part dry British sitcom.
The production is based on Noël Coward’s one-act play “Still Life,” which was adapted into a 1945 film, and unlike many contemporary plays, it is brief — a mere 95 minutes, without intermission.
Laura and Alec are two married individuals who begin an emotional affair wherein little skin is grazed. Their dramatic narrative occasionally breaks for smooth jazz intermissions and light rock ‘n’ roll, allowing viewers to keep their blood pressure in check. The story revolves mainly around a small café in the middle of a train station where the two lovers meet. The owner of the shop is involved in a raunchy affair with an official at the train station, while the young girl who works there explores her budding sexuality.
“It’s almost the smallest story that you've ever heard,” said adapter and director Emma Rice . “It’s a love letter to love, really, a wonderful chamber piece.”
The conception of the show is highly stylized, but it doesn’t get trapped in its own periodicity. Though the play often slips into a 1940s cinema depiction of crashing waves as the entrance into a turbulent mind, the side characters provide a contemporary wit to keep the show from getting too heavy or contrived.
Rice wrote the play using both the movie script and the original one-act. English playwright Coward gained popularity from his witty writing and romantic characters during World War II. “Every word is Noël [Coward]’s, including [the lyrics to] “Mad About the Boy” and “Room With a View,” Rice said. “I looked into his poetry and set them to music with my composer Stu Barker .”
The play also uses seamless integrations between black and white film and stage, with characters frequently disappearing “into” the screen and back into the dull grindings of everyday ramblings. “[“Brief Encounter”] brings the lovers story to the fore,” said Hannah Yelland, who plays Laura .
Yelland, who is recently engaged, said the situation and emotions evoked in “Brief Encounter” are very common. “The idea of having a love that can’t be pursued or realized or is impossible in one way or another … it happens quite often in life,” she said.
As Rice put it, “It’s the story of the secret emotional lives we lead, excavating the layers of the terrible trouble we get into.”