A Brief Encounter ... Again
7 / 10
Supporting actors double as a small band, providing jaunty tunes that express the characters' repressed emotions. (The cast—mostly unchanged since St. Ann's—is multitalented and very hardworking.) Crashing waves—a metaphor for surging emotion and unattainable freedom—are projected on the upstage wall. There's ingenious 39 Steps-style stagecraft—dummies for children; an actress with a long stick moving a windblown newspaper across the stage; the full cast bobbing rapidly in unison to suggest an express train rumbling past. Characters jump in and out of the movie itself, a live Purple Rose of Cairo. This Brief Encounter is vibrantly theatrical and totally absorbing.
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