"Brief Encounter" is one of the most magical theatrical experiences I've ever had. By the British company that did "A Matter of Life and Death," another magical theatrical experience, "Brief Encounter" is a play with live music on stage and film incorporated in the scenery. Based on the film by Noel Coward, it's the story of a married woman and married man (a doctor) who fall in love but know that they cannot be together because of their families. The film was produced in 1945 and the play attempts to recreate the beauty of the black and white cinematography.
The wife is married to a man who trusts her completely but their marriage is one of politeness. Politeness is a very contained thing but when she falls for the doctor she describes their love as a violent thing. Still, she is committed to her family: her husband and two children. When sneaking around leads to nothing but pain and embarassment, the doctors realizes that they must end the relationship. He tells her that it will be the end of their spending time together but not the end of their loving each other. For Coward, a gay man living at a time when it was not ok to be gay, this served as a metaphor for the love he must have felt for men but couldn't act on or nurture. All of the sadness of his situation is represented in this play. The sadness is at its height when, during their last moment together, their goodbye is interrupted by a chatty friend. The wife says that it was cruel of fate to be against them even in those last few minutes, their goodbye eventually being nothing more than his hand on her shoulder. Imagine love being able to express itself only in so poor a gesture.
The story itself is beautiful but the production's spectacle is equally wonderful. In the opening scene, standing in the aisles of the theater rather than on stage, the man yells to the woman that he loves her deeply and knows that she loves him too. She tells him that she loves him but can't stay with him and must go back to her family. Then, her husband's voice begins to call to her from the stage and, at that moment, one notices a large blank movie screen on stage. A black and white image of her husband appears and fills the screen as he pleads with her to come home. She looks at him and runs away from the doctor. She leaps on top of a couple chairs and tables and up to the stage, running into and disappearing behind the movie screen as her image appears on in the living room as she sadly looks back at the doctor. At another point the woman and the doctor sit at a table in the train station's cafe and laugh as they talk: they are falling in love. At the same time, a young musician on the edge of the stage sits back and mournfully sings a song called "Go Slow, Johnny." It's as though he sings it as a warning to the doctor as we watch them falling in love off to the right.
