Arts & Entertainment

Tone balancing

Screen-to-stage adaptation is multi-media delight

Published

12 years ago

April 2, 2014

Patrick Folliard

The cast of Kneehigh’s U.S. tour of ‘Brief Encounters’ by Jim Cox. (Photo courtesy STC)

‘Brief Encounter’

Through April 13

Shakespeare Theatre Company

The Lansburgh Theatre

450 7^th Street, NW

$30-75

202-547-1122

ShakespeareTheatre.org

Conventional wisdom says don’t mess with a classic. Typically the result is a letdown. But there are exceptions. Case in point is the UK-based Kneehigh Theatre’s delightful production of “Brief Encounter,” an adaptation of the same-named 1945 British film.

In bringing the iconic screen romance to the stage, director/playwright Emma Rice blends theater and film incorporating projections, musical numbers and myriad clever touches, all now on display at the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Lansburgh Theatre.

The David Lean film is based on Noël Coward’s “Still Life,” one of many plays the gay sophisticate wrote and performed with longtime pal Gertrude Lawrence. It follows the short-lived romance of two married people who meet cute at a train station when Alec, a handsome doctor, removes a cinder from housewife Laura’s eye. The pair begin meeting weekly, mostly in the station tearoom or restaurants, and though their feelings are intense, their relationship remains chaste, never going beyond a kiss. And while the inevitable return to their respective respectable lives and practical mates happens as expected, it’s still a painful outcome. Rice’s adaptation draws from the film and the play.

The action kicks off in the Lansburgh lobby with a zippy string quartet of cast members dressed as ‘40s movie theater ushers performing a selection of vintage tunes. Inside, the stage’s usual curtain has been swapped out for one that’s brighter and redder, reminiscent of those found in old movie palaces. There’s a big movie screen that plays black-and-white footage, a nod to the source film and an exploration of the protagonists’ experience. When not on stage, Alec (Jim Sturgeon) and Laura (Hannah Yelland in her Tony-nominated role from when the show ran on Broadway in 2010) can sometimes be found seated amongst the audience; after all, their first date was a trip to the cinema. They also may slip through a slit in the movie screen only to reappear as bigger-than-life projections.

While meeting in public, the pair is reserved. Their muted passion is represented by film of fast moving clouds and raging tides. As the romantic tension mounts, Laura begins to grapple with doing the right thing. It’s she who suggests they part ways.

Director Emma Rice’s precise and inventive staging is wondrous, the cast is superb and her team’s spectacular technical, multi-media design is top notch. Neil Murray’s set is ingeniously serviceable and his period costumes are impeccably drawn. As the besotted but staid lovers, Yelland and Sturgeon play it straight, never mocking the necessarily formal dialogue. But the supporting ensemble has no such restraints. They’re free to camp it up and play for laughs, and they do, expertly. It’s an effective balance.

The tearoom’s other regulars are its manager Myrtle (Annette McLauglin), an amusingly genteel type whose breaks are spent trysting with the amorous station manager Fred (Joe Alessi); and Beryl (Dorothy Atkinson), a cheeky waitress who is dating the cute young station snack seller, Stanley (Damon Daunno). The cast play multiple parts and along with Dave Brown and James Gow, they also sing and play instruments. Songs include Coward’s “Mad About the Boy,” “A Room with a View,” and melodic original music.

The music is put to especially good effect with another Coward song, “Go Slow, Johnny” sung poignantly by Daunno during a key scene in which the Alec and Laura are alone drying off after having fallen out of a rowboat.

Most of the play takes place in the train station. Not surprisingly, there’s a moment when it seems that Laura might throw herself on the tracks and end it all. But no, she’s too sensible for that. Instead, she returns home (two leather club chairs and a big radio) where her patient husband (Alessi, again) and young son and daughter (a pair of life-sized puppets) are waiting.

“Brief Encounter” is part of the really terrific STC Presentation whose mission is to present world class international productions to D.C. audiences. This memorable production is a testament to both the vibrancy of theater and Coward’s enduring genius.

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Theater

‘Feeling Afraid’ explores life of a neurotic stand-up comic

Navigating sex, work, and possibly love in London

Published

1 day ago

June 20, 2026

Patrick Folliard

Steven Webb in ‘Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen’ (Photo by DJ Corey)

‘Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen’
Through July 12
Studio Theatre
1501 14th St., N.W.
$55-$102
Studiotheatre.org

Wordily yet rightly titled, solo show “Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen” dives deeply into the world of a neurotic stand-up comic as he navigates sex, work, and possibly love in London.

Busy arranging hookups and dates on “The App,” the 36-year-old gay funnyman juggles a full dance card; still he’s never been in a romantic relationship. While he’s willing to give love a shot, he’s not pressed about it. As he says, he harbors no fear of dying alone.

Currently making its American premiere at Studio Theatre, this darkly humorous Edinburgh Fringe import features terrific out English actor Steven Webb as The Comedian who’s about to explore what it means to spend all his time with one man.

At Studio’s intimate Mead Theatre, Kat Heath’s minimal set says standard comedy club (fluorescent tube lighting, the mic with a long cord, a single stool backed by a rose-colored curtain), but gay playwright Marcelo Dos Santos has conjured something much more than a live comedy set.

Yes, The Comedian bounces onstage in his red Converse high tops, jeans, and pink shirt with a huge mouth emblazoned on the back, but he delivers more than jokes. At times hilariously self-deprecating, then dark, and occasionally a lesson on what makes standup work, this is a layered, well-acted piece.

With Webb (a keen caricaturist of types and voices) playing all the parts while conducting The Comedian’s hilariously frenetic interior monologue, “Feeling Afraid” takes us through a summer of love. It seems after six chaste dates with The American, our nervous hero has found Mr. Right. The American is earnest, smart, hesitant to initiate sex. He’s also well built with a beautiful smile. And strangely, he’s been medically advised not to laugh aloud.

The Comedian delights in the joys of new love: dates, first kisses, sex, and then suddenly spending all of his time with the adored. Visits to art galleries become fun. Eating home cooked meals followed by grim documentaries is a thing. The Comedian is beguiled as his own boyish figure fills out, but something isn’t right. He can’t entirely relax.

Along the way we meet the Aussie doctor, our protagonist’s longtime hookup; a young runner with some exceptional body parts; the random third in a failed threesome; grumpy working comics, male and female; and an ineffectual counselor.

Webb gives a lightning-fast performance that boggles the mind (in terms velocity and virtuosity). He can be impish, very impish. He’s nervous energy incarnate, flashing jazz hands, grimacing but handsome when still. He’s likeable, a necessity when delivering a hilariously rude joke just feet away from two stone-faced audience members. (Perhaps they were laughing on the inside? At any rate, they stayed through the end the show.)

Produced by the team behind Fringe hits “Fleabag” and “Baby Reindeer,” small stage works that were developed into major TV screen successes, “Feeling Afraid” is funny for sure, and it’s also highly confessional, sexually explicit, and raw.

Written by Dos Santos during COVID lockdown, the piece was a smash hit in the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe before finding further success in London. Its depiction of a youngish queer guy navigating the big city rings entirely true. Like so much Fringe stuff, the one-man show is delightfully lewd and standup inspired.

One little moan: the show closes cleverly but too abruptly with its star dashing offstage without sufficiently basking in the admiration and applause of his thoroughly chuffed audience.

They say third time’s a charm, and regarding “Feeling Afraid,” I’d agree. After two performance cancellations (first for laryngitis and the second involving faulty air conditioning on an especially muggy June evening), I made my third trek to Studio where I found both the actor and AC in very fine fettle. And truly, Webb’s work was more than worth the wait.