A Timeless Love
September 2013
The UK’s Kneehigh Theatre is touring Australia with their production of Brief Encounter. Next stop: Melbourne Festival.
Winding up now in Adelaide but heading on to a season at the Melbourne Festival, State Theatre of SA has combined forces with Arts Projects Australia and Cornwall’s Kneehigh Theatre Company to present the UK ensemble’s hit production of Brief Encounter in Australia.
Based on Noël Coward‘s one-act play Still Life that was later turned into the legendary film under the name Brief Encounter, the stage production is a multi-media event featuring live actors, musicians, film footage and puppets as well as a toy train.
“It’s a show that Kneehigh have been doing on and off for a number of years now,” English actor Joe Alessi says. “And it’s changed a lot because every time we bring it back we try and make it even better. It’s constantly evolving – for instance we used to have an interval but we don’t now – and we’ve completely cut some scenes and tweaked others.
“I’m not saying it was bad before – it’s had some amazing reviews and the subject matter about love and how it manifests itself is something audiences can really relate to – but it’s just that we always want to bring something new to it.”
Two Australian actors, Kate Cheel and Michelle Nightingale, spent much of August in the UK rehearsing with the company ahead of the Australian tour.
“They’ve been great,” Alessi says, “and both learnt their lines really well before arriving and even just having two new actors helps bring a freshness to the play for the other actors. It’s given the play a completely new dynamic and energy and the challenge for us to meet that new dynamic and spirit,” he adds.
The work is set at an English train station in the early 1940s and tells of a married woman falling completely for another man.
“It really encapsulates that era because it’s a play about a forbidden love that was totally against the suburban English way at that time,” Alessi remarks. “So [in Brief Encounter] a woman with very strong moral values is really tested by the conservatism of that time. Divorce would have been frowned upon and regarded as scandalous.
“You couldn’t set Brief Encounter in modern times because it just wouldn’t make any sense,” he continues with a laugh. “People seem to have affairs all the time now. But it remains such a classic film and one that any fan of film would have seen,” Alessi suggests.
Alessi goes on to say that Kneehigh’s director, Emma Rice, likes to take classic tales and revamp them.
“Kneehigh like to work with folk stories and stories about love,” he says, “because they are fundamental themes and quite timeless. The company always likes to do that and Brief Encounter is just such a classic story that transcends time. Emma saw that in the story and also in Still Life, the play that preceded the film. Kneehigh began 32 years ago as a theatre company for children and has evolved from that.”
The actor, who hasn’t been to Australia since touring with the Royal Shakespeare Company some 20 years ago, says he became involved in acting by accident rather than design.
“I had what you might call a normal job but then somehow feel into acting,” Alessi recalls. “One thing led to another and I eventually went to London to train at drama school. And then Emma at Kneehigh said, ‘Oh, you should come and play with us’. And I like that she used the word ‘play’ rather than ‘work’ because that’s what Kneehigh are all about. It’s how the company works – we play at creating great stories.”
Brief Encounter opens with a couple of musicians entertaining the audience as they take to their seats.
“It’s such a fantastic theatre experience,” Alessi concludes. “What I love is that a lot of people come along expecting to see a straight reading of the film, but what we do is entirely different. So I love the surprise on the faces of the audience when they see what we have done with it.”
Melbourne Festival and Arts Projects Australia in association with John and Janet Calvert-Jones and The Brenda Shanahan Charitable Foundation present Brief Encounter, a Kneehigh Theatre Production, at the Athenaeum Theatre, 188 Collins St, Melbourne, from October 9 – 27.
Bookings: melbournefestival.com.au or Ticketek 132 849
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