HILARIOUSLY entertaining but beautifully nostalgic, the new play at the Salisbury Playhouse takes you back to a time when life was simpler…or was it?
Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter explores infidelity and how love can be stronger than family connections and marriage and when and if someone should simply walk away from something so enticingly sweet.
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Emotions travel faster than time and a connection between two people can be formed in a single moment and that’s what happens when Laura Jesson (Hanora Kamen) has a chance meeting with Dr Alec Harvey (Jammy Kasongo) at the train station café.
Laura gets something in her eye and Dr Harvey offers to help her. That one moment changes their lives. Their chance meetings turn into something more over a period of a few weeks and the audience becomes swept up in a 'will they or won’t they' scenario.
The train station café becomes the central hub for those chance meetings but behind the scenes, love is flourishing too.
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Amid the joyful banter between Mrytle Bagot (Nicola Bryan) who runs the station cafe and Albert Godby (Samuel Morgan-Grahame) who works on the railway, they brazenly flirt regularly disappearing into the office together much to the delight of the audience.
Then, there is café worker Beryl (Lucy Elizabeth Thorburn) who innocently develops a crush on Stanley (Luke Thornton) which is very much reciprocated.
Musicians set the scene before the audience even took to their seats with appealing 'of the time' songs played live by the Playhouse entrance and remained in character taking to the stage as the seats filled.
With live music throughout, there was a vibrancy to the stage and individual scenes were short, captivating, and amusing.
The set was cleverly transformed using a curtain as a screen and special effects create a backdrop of the trains entering and leaving the station.
The play lasts for just two hours including an interval and is believably portrayed and captivating.
Brief Encounter adapted for the stage by Emma Rice brings the full gamut of emotions wrapped up in a lively bubble of fun, laughter, and music.
Brief Encounter is available until Saturday, April 22.
For more, go to Wiltshire Creative.
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