MODERN THEATER FOR A NOEL COWARD LOVE STORY 
                                              By Carol Benet
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area theater
                                                                 Weeks starting Sept. 25, 2009
                                                                 Vol. 12, No. 17
          A souped-up version of Noel Coward’s  Brief Encounter is the main dish being served up these days by the highly versatile performers of the American Conservatory Theatre.
            No, they do not “update” the plot so that the lovers run off and leave their families. But they do add modern theatrical technology with cinema, music and theater making the show something that you want to see.  Produced and played by the London cast that has toured the British Isles with it and for which it was nominated for four Oliver Awards, Brief Encounter has been extended here  through October 11 before it goes to New York City.
            The idea came from the Adaptor/Director Emma Rice who was a member of the Kneehigh Theatre troupe in Cornwall, England, a performance group that relied on clowning and comedy and played to a youthful audience in barns, beaches and woodlands.  They toured internationally.  Then the pros in London took it on. 
            In 1936 Noël Coward wrote a one-act play called Still Life that in 1945 was turned into a classic movie Brief Encounter with Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson.  This is a story about a suburban housewife who meets a married doctor by chance in a railway station tearoom and they fall in love.  Brief Encounter has remained a classic love story – because of its chasteness and stiff-upper-lip-ness.  They never consummate their love and in the end they stay with their spouses.  How old fashioned can a plot be? 
            In the current production, the use of puppetry to convey the two children of the smitten housewife Laura (Hannah Yelland) comes from Kneehigh techniques.  The set uses the movie of Brief Encounter as a reference point and as a background.  And the actors physically walk through the screen at times to break down the barrier between it and the real stage.  Actors also come on stage through the audience with whom they interact, thus breaking down the barriers established in the classic theater structure.  As much as we’ve seen this audience/acting intermingling, in Brief Encounter it seems fresh and natural.
            Alec (Milo Twomey) is so handsome that any matinee matron would fall in love with him just as husband Fred (Joseph Alessi) is predictable and boring.  Alessi also cleverly morphs into the important role of the station master Albert, a lecherous, slimy character lusting after Myrtle (Annette McLaughlin), the well-endowed waitress at the tearoom.  
            And all the actors sing, play instruments and dance as well. Stanley, the candy vendor, plays many instruments – ukulele, bass, accordion, etc. The music, most of it Coward’s, is a major reason that the play is so enjoyable.  Before the play begins, musicians, dressed as ushers complete with pill-box hats of the era, actually seat the audience and then they play music of the period.  They play from the aisles, corridors, balconies and then on stage.  These same “ushers” turn out to be the actors and continue all through the play breaking out in song, even when the plot does not require it, such as Coward’s Mad About the Boy. 
            Beverly Rudd, a wonderful multi-talented actress and dancer,  unreels Mad About the Boy. She plays the fat, dim-witted and comedic employee at the teashop with a silly giggle.  She also plays the corpulent matron with a dog who haughtily greets the guilty lovers when they do not want to be seen together on the street. 
            There are so many commedia dell'arte techniques in this play that you almost gasp with surprise when they are upon you:  the windstorm that brings the lovers together, the crashing waves that in Freudian moments symbolizing their the longing for physical love, the eardrum bursting sounds of the approaching train and the actors acting as if they are caught in an earthquake. These episodes continue even to the end the stage play when it references the original film where Laura is left alone playing the piano and the music of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto drifts off in the background. 
            For a real treat, catch the show at ACT.  
            Brief Encounter at A.C.T. through October 11.  Box Office at the theater, 405 Geary Street at Mason, San Francisco.  Or call 415.749.2228, or go online.
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        © Carol Benet 2009
        Carol Benet is a regular theater reviewer for artssf.com.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly)focus on theater, dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into recordings by local artists, and a few departures into books (by authors of the region)as well.
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