Review of Brief Encounter at Royal Exchange, Manchester.
The sound of passing trains may rattle around the auditorium, but a relaxing glow emanates from Milford Junction’s refreshment room.
Overhead, designer Rose Revitt’s elegant metal arches and solid station clock set the scene nicely for the Royal Exchange’s new production for Brief Encounter. Polished wooden flooring on stage and autumnal lighting tones create an inviting warmth.
Noël Coward’s influence looms large. Emma Rice’s 2007 adaptation blends together both his original play Still Life, and the iconic 1940s film which it inspired – and ten of Coward’s songs have been freshly woven into the show by director Sarah Frankcom.
The extramarital attraction between housewife Laura (Hannah Azuonye) and surgeon Alec (Baker Mukasa) still remains at the heart of this Brief Encounter – although Rice’s adaption creates more space for romance within the community of station workers who circle around Laura and Alec’s tea-fuelled moments together.
Tracks criss-cross the stage, and people constantly come and go – creating a well-evoked sense of busyness, of passing through. There is a restlessness too in Laura and Alec’s first interactions, as they flit from table to table, afraid to settle with their newly found feelings for each other.
A more confidently navigated courtship is underway between refreshment room manager Myrtle and station guard Fred (Richard Glaves). While romance is also blossoming between their younger colleagues – with snack seller Stanley (Georgia Frost) awkwardly, but determinedly, wooing shy waitress Beryl.
The relatively straightforward nature of these two relationships, and the joy in watching them develop, only serves to puncture some of the tension around the central couple’s more buttoned-up overtures. Stiff, stilted dialogue, and an underpowered sense of chemistry between the two leads doesn’t help things.
Passionate depths are not the preserve of the middle classes here, if anything they seem incapable of handling them. Mukasa’s Alec may declare “I want to splash about in a dangerous sea,” but it doesn’t take much for him and Laura to retreat to the safety of their respective domestic shores.
Perhaps it’s unsurprising that a modern audience’s gaze may be more readily drawn to Christina Modestou’s Myrtle Bagot. Here is a woman who has walked away from previous unsatisfying relationships, values her own opinions, and stands for no nonsense.
Modestou’s thrilling rendition of No Good At Love shatters the show’s previously polite veneer. Roaring and purring with emotion, she moves around the refreshment room in her apron as if channelling a chanteuse prowling the tables of a night club.
An on-stage band, under the guidance of musical director Matthew Malone, give Coward’s compositions a liberating jazz-inflected kick, sending them soaring higher.
Frankcom’s decision to showcase Coward’s song writing skills pays dividends. It’s during the production’s melodic moments that characters most clearly come into focus. With arms spread wide, Ida Regan’s diminutive Beryl seems suddenly capable of take-off as she passionately storms through Mad About The Boy.
Sat at a piano, Laura’s feelings after saying goodbye to Alec, are no longer stifled by clipped vowels or a stiff upper lip, but instead pour out of her, as Hannah Azuonye delivers a spine-tingling rendition of Come The Wild, Wild Weather – a slow-burning, heart-breaking acceptance of her fate.
It is clear from the programme that Sarah Frankcom has long held a desire to stage Coward’s work – and it’s difficult not to wonder what might have been if she had more of a free hand. At times, her ambitions seem hemmed in by Rice’s well established adaptation.
A touch of fine-tuning with the production’s mood board wouldn’t go amiss – occasionally the staging seems to be heading in one direction, while the actors’ faces tell another story. Is this a swoony boat ride on a blossom-strewn lake or some entertaining foolishness with a big bunch of tree branches? Such moments of uncertainty result in audience laughter in seemingly inappropriate places.
Which is a shame, because there is wonderful craft and artistry to admire, and enjoy. Alec and Laura’s sudden waterborne glide around the stage. An elegantly conjured up steam train. Everyone suddenly kicking up a storm (dazzling choreography from Sundeep Saini) in an exuberant extended dance sequence. And everything so richly soundtracked by the band who, in the show’s most winning moments, combine with cast and songbook to electrifying effect.
Performance seen on 7 December 2023.
Brief Encounter runs at Royal Exchange from 2 December 2023 to 13 January 2024.
Images by Johan Persson.
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