In a Total Swoon Over "Brief Encounter"

I’ve fallen in love.  The object of my affection is the Kneehigh Theatre, a company based in Cornwall, England and the creator of a wonder-filled show called Brief Encounter that opened at St. Ann’s Warehouse last night.  Kneehigh specializes in theater, that, says the New York Times, is driven by “theatrical rather than narrative imagination.” (Click here to read the Times piece about the company) 

The full expression of that imagination is on display in Brief Encounter, an adaptation of David Lean’s classic 1945 movie about two middle-aged married people who meet and fall in love in a British train station. The movie was based on Noel Coward’s one-act play Still Life and Kneehigh’s co-artistic director Emma Rice, who adapted and directed the stage version, has incorporated bits of it and other Coward work into this staging of Brief Encounter.  

Rice and her superlative design theme also mix in melodrama, musical hall numbers, video imagery, puppetry and some other spectacular coup d’theatre that I refuse to spoil for you (although you can click here to see a video trailer of the show).  It’s a marvelous blend of the old and the new that combines into a distinctively 21st century form of theater.  The scenic designer Neil Murray, lighting designer Malcolm Rippeth, projection designers Jon Driscoll and Gemma Carrington and sound designer Simon Baker all deserve special shoutouts.

Brief Encounter shares elements with The 39 Steps, the parody of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 thriller that is scheduled to close on Jan. 10 after some 750 performances on Broadway.  But The 39 Steps is all fast action and funny gags.  Brief Encounter has them too, thanks to a nimble ensemble of seven actors and musicians who assume multiple roles.  But this show also has heart. In the midst of all the hijinks, Hannah Yelland and Tristan Sturrock create meaningful and believable portrayals of the power of love.   

The audience the night my friend Jesse and I went out to the Dumbo section of Brooklyn to see the show was so enchanted that nearly everyone stayed behind for the talkback, lead by the pixieish Rice but attended by the entire cast.  Rice was so entertaining as she described the company’s method of working and some of the things they’d tried during rehearsals but jettisoned (dressing the ill-fated lovers as cats for one scene!) that I found myself wanting to run away with her.

There’s a new academic field called “Liveness Studies” that frets that live events from theater to football games have “become increasingly invaded, contaminated and eroded” by the technologies of TV, the movies and the computer screen (click here if you want to know more about it).  Maybe. But this version of Brief Encounter, which runs only through Jan. 3, can’t be replicated in any other medium than on a live stage.  You have to be there to experience it. And this theater lover is deeply grateful that I had the chance to do so because this show set my heart aflutter. 

"Around the World in 80 Days" is a Fun Trip

Silliness is often an underrated virtue. I know because I’m usually one of the people turning up her nose at it. But sometimes all you want out of a night at the theater is just a little fun. Particularly on a soft summer evening. Or after a day full of hard news about rising gas prices, falling home values and a wobbly stock market. That may explain why laugh fests like Boeing-Boeing and The 39 Steps are doing well right now. And it’s a good part of the reason that my pal Bill and I decided to take in Around the World in 80 Days at the Irish Repertory Theatre, which is apparently taking a summer break from Irish-themed shows.

The trend of turning movies into plays and musicals has now become so established that a subgenre has popped up: three dimensional shadow plays that attempt to recreate an entire film with just a handful of actors playing all the parts and aided by only the simplest props. The shadow version of the old Alfred Hitchcock thriller The 39 Steps didn’t work for me but it tickled enough other people that the Roundabout moved it from a limited run at the American Airlines Theatre to an unlimited one at the Cort last spring.

Staging Around the World in 80 Days, the classic Jules Verne adventure story that was made into a motion picture spectacular back in 1956, is even a bigger challenge. The movie, produced by Elizabeth Taylor’s then-husband Mike Todd, cost nearly $6 million, ran for almost three hours, was filmed on 140 locations in six different countries, and won five Oscars including Best Movie. It also boasted 40 co-stars including David Niven as the wealthy 19th century adventurer Phileas Fogg who wagers his fortune that he can circumnavigate the globe in less than three months, the Mexican comic actor Cantinflas as his indomitable French manservant Passepartout, Shirley McLaine as Aouda, a young Indian princess they rescue from the sacrificial flames of a forced Sati, and surprise cameos from such big-time names as Noël Coward, Marlene Dietrich, Ava Gardner, John Gielgud, Buster Keaton, and Frank Sinatra.

The Irish Rep production has just five actors and two onstage Foley artists who create both the show’s music and its important sounds effects, from raging storms to moving trains. Even by the stripped-down standards of this new genre of mini parodies, it’s a puny production. But it offers some hearty laughs, particularly in the second act. And despite my high bar for low comedy, I had a good time and enjoyed it more than I did The 39 Steps.

Around the World in 80 Days isn’t as slick as its Broadway cousin but that may be what appealed to me. Instead of showing off how clever they are, the 80 Days cast members embrace the silliness of the whole endeavor and seem to have such fun doing so that their delight becomes infectious. Evan Zes, one of those anything-for-a-laugh actors who goes right to the edge of hokeyness, jumps off and then claws his way back into your good graces, shines in the flamboyant role of Passepartout. But Jay Russell, juggling 16 roles, and John Keating, playing at least eight, are just as hilariously terrific.

Daniel Stewart and Lauren Elise McCourt hold their own in the less flashy roles of Fogg and Aouda. Mark Brown’s script joyfully patches together all kinds of jokes from sight gags to broad but gentle ethnic humor. The direction by Michael Evan Haney, associate artistic director of Cincinnati Playhouse, is inventive and sometimes just plain goofy. People in the audience at the performance Bill and I attended, which included Joanne Woodward, whooped with delight at some of the antics.

There’s no hot air balloon, as there famously was in the movie, but if you get a chance to see Around the World in 80 Days before its run ends on Sept. 7, keep an eye out for the elephant. It’s simultaneously silly and, in a summertime kind of way, sublime. Just like the show.

Stumbling on "The 39 Steps"

The funny thing about comedy is that we don’t all laugh at the same things. One person’s guffaw is another’s ho-hum. What makes one person giggle with glee can make another wriggle in discomfort. What got me thinking about all of this is the Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of The 39 Steps, the parody of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1935 romantic thriller that opened at the American Airlines Theatre this week.

The conceit of the show is that just four actors recreate all of the movie’s 100 or so speaking parts in its fast-moving story about an innocent man who is swept up in a murderous conspiracy and rushes across England and Scotland trying to clear his name. The movie is considered the greatest of the films that Hitchcock made in England before moving to Hollywood and the stage parody was a great hit in London, even winning an Olivier Award. The New York theater critics seem tickled too. And me? Well, not so much.

My husband K and I are big Hitchcock fans. When we’re at a loss for a DVD to watch, we always know we can count on Hitchcock. We got "The 39 Steps" the weekend before we saw the play and a good thing too. Not only did we thoroughly enjoy the movie but we would have missed out on a bunch of the play’s jokes without it. But even though we got the bits, we didn’t find them as funny as the London fans or the New York critics apparently did.

I certainly can't blame the hard-working cast, particularly Arnie Burton and Cliff Saunders, who play most of the roles. And the way director Maria Aitken uses simple props—a few chairs, some boxes, sheets, a wooden rectangle—to recreate the film’s special effects, including a race across the top of a moving train and a plane crash, is indisputably clever. Still, instead of rolling with laughter, I was just mildly amused.

Maybe the Brits loved it more because they're more familiar with the movie. Maybe if it has been a staged parody of “Casablanca” or “The Godfather,” it would have hit home more with me. Judging by the polite applause at the curtain call, K and I weren’t the only ones who’d expected to have a better time. As people filed out of their seats after the curtain call, the women sitting in front of us turned around and asked what we thought of the show. We told them. They confessed that although they’d seen the movie years ago, they couldn’t remember most of it and so some of the funny bits had gone right over their heads.

After the show, K and I walked two blocks over to the Algonquin, the old hotel made famous by the writers who lunched at its legendary Round Table in the 1920s. I ordered a vodka cocktail called The Parker in honor of Dorothy Parker, the witty writer, screenwriter and one-time theater critic. Parker—the woman, not the cocktail—went out to Hollywood a year before the original "The 39 Steps" was made and worked on dozens of scripts including the 1937 version of “A Star Is Born.” But it’s her Round Table-era quips that still make me chuckle. The most infamous is probably her critique of a Katharine Hepburn performance: “She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.” Which, alas, more or less sums up how I felt about The 39 Steps.