Brief Encounter @ Birmingham Repertory Theatre

Someone, possibly Michael Billington, once compared Kneehigh to a cult rock group. Not only do they do their own thing, but they also have a hardcore group of devotees for whom they can do no wrong. These Kneehighites (Knee-heights? oh dear) do not really include me. I am a Friend of Kneehigh, and I look forward immensely to their shows, but I do like to reserve judgement.

It was odd, therefore, to find myself at Birmingham Rep among a crowd clearly very new to Kneehigh’s work, mostly school theatre groups brought on trips by their hip teachers and senior citizens attracted by the play itself, an adaptation of Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter . Kneehigh played up to this audience, shrounding the production with old cinema style trappings including a big screen, old-style censor certificate and even a series of extremely funny mock commercials in the interval (“Hamlet’s cigars, for when she just won’t shut up” and so on). We were entertained beforehand by a group of musicians singing old 30s songs, which the elder members of the audience were happily singing along to. Kneehigh’s affectionate nostalgia for the period, first hinted at in A Matter of Life and Death, blossomed here.

This was Kneehigh at their most audience-friendly and most, dare I say it, conventional. Gone were the usually omnipresent chorus of Parkas and loners. Gone were the urban soundtracks and loud beats. Gone too were the extravagent aerial stunts, save for a brief moment when the two lovers were hoisted by their arms for a tantalising second, almost taking off but just failing. For this was a story grounded in reality of two lovers shackled by their responsibilities and unable to indulge in the kinds of fantasy Kneehigh normally play in. This was, perhaps, their most real story yet.

Tristan Sturrock (practically reprising his role from Life and Death) and new recruit Naomi Frederick were excellent as the two stylised lovers, Laura and Alec. Bound by rules of 30s etiquette, their relationship was for the most part realised through handshakes, polite cuppas in a station cafe and forlorn waves across the platforms. The most erotically charged scene saw Laura and Alec undressing themselves discretely after falling into a river, both trying to reconcile their shyness and modesty with their passion for each others’ dishevelled selves. Only once did they manage to enjoy a full-on, uninterrupted kiss. Their passion was also communicated via the repeated image of waves crashing on the huge screen, the lovers moving as the tides of passion washed over them.

This story ran through as the clear focus of interest, and Kneehigh created an amazing emotional connection with the two. My usual complaint with Kneehigh is that real emotion sometimes gets swamped by the craziness on stage, but here the stylised love story was given full room to grow and draw the audience in.

An unusually small cast of six actors, plus two musicians, fleshed out the rest of the story. Myrtle and Albert, the station cafe manager and guard, started an affair that fully enjoyed the passion denied to the two leads, while dippy waitress Beryl enjoyed the first flush of young love with cake-seller Stanley. The three love stories worked well in juxtaposition, allowing three different manifestations of love to comment on each other.

However unusual this show was, however, it was still Kneehigh. In the most startling scene, a huge sheet was pulled across the front of the stage and a storey-high express train shot across the entire stage while Laura stood above, on the verge of jumping to a highly dramatic death. The impact of a life-size train speeding across the stage was set off by the earlier appearance of a small toy train onto the back of which Alec hopped in his first departure from Laura. Stanley used a trampoline to enter the cafe, Beryl rode around on a red scooter which she eventually threw away in a fit of pique and Laura’s children were played by two puppets.

The burlesque feel of the production was compounded by it being presented as just part of a series of variety acts. The ever-talented Amanda Lawrence shone in the rest of these, standing out as the cast performed in a range of song and dance routines. The cast also doubled in a variety of cameo roles, repeatedly changing costume and character to create a large number of grotesques and caricatures who further highlighted the purity and simplicity of the central story. Two dragged up musicians added to the fun, underscoring the action with a range of 30s influenced cues that the cast took great pleasure in contributing to, most notably Stuart McLoughlin whose musical abilities were one of the evening’s highlights.

This was the most simple and direct I have ever seen Kneehigh, and it paid off with a production that will appeal far more to the mainstream than their previous work. Perhaps not as daring as usual, but the emotional impact they drew out of the work more than made up for this.

Peter Kirwan : 11 Oct 2007 13:25 |  Tags: Productions |  Comments (1) |  Report a problem