Emma Rice on Her Long Romance with Brief Encounter

About the author:
Emma Rice will do whatever it takes to tell a story. As the artistic director of Cornwall-based Kneehigh Theatre and adapter/director of Broadway’s latest British import, Brief Encounter, Rice took that beloved film—and Still Life, the Noel Coward play that inspired it—and blended traditional theater with Coward's music hall songs, film clips, projections, dance and puppets to tell her version of the star-crossed love tale. Just before opening night at Roundabout Theatre Company’s Studio 54, Rice took a moment to let Broadway.com inside her work, and share how she turned a one-act play and film into a moving multimedia experience.

A lot of stars aligned for Brief Encounter. I didn’t set out to do this show. When I first went in to meet with British producer, David Pugh, it was for another reason entirely.

I run Kneehigh Theatre, and I’m quite busy running it, so I said to myself, “Whatever he asks you to do, say no.” We had a meeting, and he was absolutely charming and asked me if I wanted to do Peter Pan. I love the idea of eternal youth, but I felt very proud of myself because I said, “Thank you so much, but I don’t think this is the project for me at the moment.” I went to say goodbye and give him a hug and my eyes flicked to his shelf of DVDs, and it just popped out at me: Brief Encounter. So as I was leaving, I said, “If you’d asked me to do Brief Encounter, this would have been a different conversation.” And he said, “Do you want to do it?” And I said yes.

Brief Encounter is a film we’re all aware of in England. I know I had seen it, but I don’t know when. It’s something you see on a Sunday when it’s raining or when you’re off school sick. I’d never thought about it as an adult, but at that moment instinct took over. And one’s instinct is always the guiding star. We all are so busy using our heads that we miss out on the iceberg—our gut instinct—below.

At that point I was nearing 40. I absolutely knew what "brief encounters" are. I did have a failed marriage; I did know what it was like to try and juggle life and love and one’s own struggles and society’s expectations of you. At the moment I said yes, it was the iceberg speaking.

I started with just memories of the film—mine and other people’s. They are as much truth as what’s written on the page. Next, I read all of Noel Coward’s poetry and listened to as much of his music as I could find. It was like Aladdin’s cave: He writes the funniest, dirtiest songs and the most heartbreakingly truthful and agonizing poetry. By the time I got to Still Life and the film, I had a really big picture of not only Noel Coward’s psyche but my psyche as well. Then I finally read the script, and it’s like the cherry on top.

I knew the film, but I had never read Still Life, the one-act Brief Encounter is based on. I knew that it was set in a café and it was very working class, which I knew I’d really enjoy. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the play is really a six-hander about three different stop points of love. The film had the very dignified romantic tragedy of Alec and Laura at the center of it, but I’ve also been allowed to play marvelously with the other characters. If you get an audience laughing and singing and feeling positive about something, then they’ll also give their hearts to the darker materials.

One of my favorite moments in the show is when Alec and Laura have been left alone in the café. The lights have been switched off, so there’s nothing left, not even light. They sit in the dark, saying goodbye. And at that moment, Beryl and Stanley—the young tea-girl and the boy who sells chocolate bars—scamper off to find 15 minutes together before her mum comes home. The counterpoint of the hope and freedom of that young love next to what’s left in a dark café is what really speaks to me. That moment wouldn’t be as moving without the human lightness next to it.

We’ve found a great space in Studio 54: epic and a little grubby, with this slight messiness—a little dirt underneath the fingernails. It suits the eclectic nature of Brief Encounter. It’s a beautiful show, but it’s about two good people getting into trouble and how they find their way out. The slight messiness of being a human being is always under the surface.