Happiness and heartbreak await the audience when the latest Noel Coward play comes to the Salisbury Playhouse stage.  

Salisbury Journal: Image: New Wolsey Theatre Image: New Wolsey Theatre (Image: New Wolsey Theatre)

Brief Encounter reveals the story behind a chance encounter which takes place in a train station tearoom. 

A love affair subsequently develops between a suburban housewife and a married doctor and it leads them to question whether they should risk everything they have for the sake of love. 

Read more: Mystery photo sparks a quest to find the location

Salisbury Journal: Image: New Wolsey Theatre Image: New Wolsey Theatre (Image: New Wolsey Theatre)

The play is still in its rehearsal stage, and Actor Nicola Bryan (Mrytle Bagot) took some time out from rehearsals to talk about the play.

She said: “My character Mrytle is really an onlooker, but she probably sees everything that is going on. She's with Albert, they are older but there are three different love stories and a real sense of nostalgia.”

Salisbury Journal: Image: New Wolsey Theatre Image: New Wolsey Theatre (Image: New Wolsey Theatre)

The play is set in the late 1930s and an affair at that time was taboo. 

Nicola said: “I think the audience will reflect on what is important in their own relationships when this scenario runs. It’s about that spark in a relationship and how, if that is lost, you lose a part of yourself. People will be able to see elements of the story in their own lives.”

“It’s about forbidden love and infidelity is so catastrophic. I'd like to think that the audience members form their own opinion at the end of the play.”

Read more: Pub of the year...again

Brief Encounter has humour as well as heartbreak and live music. It has been adapted for the stage by award-winning theatre-maker Emma Rice and is directed by the new chief executive Douglas Rintoil (Made in Dagenham, Private Lives and All My Sons).

It is brought to the stage by the producers behind (The Ladykillers and Guys and Dolls).

Brief Encounters is at Salisbury Playhouse on Friday, March 31 and finishes on Saturday, April 22.

For more, go to Wiltshire Creative.co.uk