Review: A BRIEF ENCOUNTER Moves Seamlessly at Jewel Box Theatre

"Immersive" is one of those non-specific buzzwords that gets slapped on shows from time to time that could mean anything. There are undoubtedly more specific and meaningful words, and they could probably all be used to describe Jewel Box Theatre's production of BRIEF ENCOUNTER.

In the canon of theatre literature, playwright Noel Coward ranks among as prolific as any. He wrote more than fifty plays, a dozen musical theatre pieces, as well as poetry, short stories, and a three-volume autobiography. He also wrote screenplays, which is what BRIEF ENCOUNTER originally was. Well, technically it was a short play called "Still Life", which he then adapted into a screenplay for the 1945 film. In 2007, theatre director Emma Rice adapted the film into a play with music. The basic story is timeless: two young people fall in love with each other but know that they can't have each other. Heartache ensues.

The play maintains the basic story of the movie: while returning home from her weekly excursion for shopping and a matinee movie, middle-class housewife Laura Jesson meets general practitioner Alec Harvey at the train station. What begins as an innocent relationship soon develops into something much more, which might not be a problem were it not for the fact that both are married and have children. Rice's version seamlessly blends the cinematic with the theatrical, which is appropriate given the role that the cinema plays in the story. There are multimedia elements as well as live music (in an especially fascinating bit of storytelling, some of the actors double as musicians). The original play was five scenes, and this version maintains somewhat of the same structure: a series of scenes that contrast the angst of Alec and Laura's relationship with the joy of relationships around them.

I've long held that what's possible in a performance space is constrained only by the bounds of your imagination. Sure, there are some things that just can't happen. Elphaba isn't going to fly in a 50-set basement theatre (at least, not to the same effect). But a compelling story told well can happen anywhere. Under the direction of Ronn Burton, Jewel Box's BRIEF ENCOUNTER is an ambitious exercise in the power of creative use of space and imaginative storytelling. This play has a lot of moving parts, and they move, to use the cliché, like a well-oiled machine. The play is fluid with no intermission, and each moment flowed into the next without the show ever feeling like the pacing was too fast or too slow.

Nothing in the play feels forced or gimmicky, from the acting to the staging. The videos are seamlessly integrated into the story (true in the most literal sense; the characters physically walk through the projector screen and "into" the film). And then there are some moments of pure theatre, from a comedy of errors boat ride that relies on live sound effects and a "human" tree branch to the use of mops as dogs. There's a dream-like quality to the play, which isn't surprising given that the film was framed as Laura imagining that she's confessing her affair to her husband. The movement between the real and the surreal are aided by Isaiah Williams' lighting design and physical moments of gesture by the actors.

Jeremy Sheets brings a natural sweetness and charm to Alec, and Leah Coleman Arnold brings a similar gentle charm to Laura. Both effectively navigate between their character's affection for the other, growing guilt at their infidelity, and the angst of a fatalist romance. The entire ensemble deserves praise for wearing many hats (literally, in some cases): they were at once actors, musicians, ushers, and/or ensemble characters.

Jewel Box is producing an increasingly wide variety of shows, and BRIEF ENCOUNTER may well be its most ambitious to date. But with risk comes reward, and the reward here is a truly fascinating evening of theatre.

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