My affair with Brief Encounter

10 April 2012

Emma Rice is a happy woman. The reviews for her West End stage version of Noël Coward's B r i e f Encounter are terrific, calling it a "first-class return to romance" that "eloquently captures the repressed, self-destructive aspect of mid-Forties middle England sexuality".

Rice and her theatre company, Kneehigh, have taken a classic weepie - and turned it into a bold, experimental piece of theatre that will appeal to romantics and deconstructionists alike. For the next five months, they are staging it at the Cinema, Haymarket, which premiered Coward's film in 1946. In a brilliant piece of marketing the interior has been transformed into a 1940s picture palace, with ushers serving champagne and cucumber sandwiches.

"It's about breaking down those barriers that we're so armed with in modern life," says Rice. "If you get people to laugh or join in a sing-song or give them a sandwich, they're also going to cry."

As writer-director, Rice, 40, has combined elements from the film starring Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard with Coward's original short play, Still Life. We still get a killer romance between Alec, a married doctor, and Laura, a housewife, but the performance includes dance, video projection and original songs by Coward.

"People have asked me: 'Is the story still relevant today?' I want to say say: 'Of course, what world are you in?' People still don't jump into bed and find it easy," Rice says. "People absolutely wrestle with their consciences, and with society."

When I meet Rice, who has been Kneehigh's artistic director since 2005, I'm expecting a bit of a theatre terrorist. She loves to demolish classic texts. Actually Rice, dark-haired in a glamorous floral tea dress, believes in this love story with her heart and soul.

She's drawn by Coward's raw honesty. "I recognise every bloody moment of it! It's fascinating that we still live in an era where monogamy is a problem. Statisticallyit's what we do - we try to stay with one person - but other human beings will come into our lives and touch us, and we need to make decisions. It's interesting that we all try and stick a lid on that possibility. I have to be careful what I'm say because I'm on tape but I would never expect somebody else not to take delight in another human being."

The knives were out for Brief Encounter. Kneehigh, who combine theatre with song and dance, are usually the critics' darlings. But Rice's last production with Tom Morris - a stage version of the Powell and Pressburger film, A Matter of Life and Death, at the National - was savaged by male critics, who thought it a self-indulgent remake.

The ensuing spat led National artistic director Nick Hytner to launch an attack on the "dead white men" of theatre - accusing them of "sniggering" at plays directed by women and lesbian directors. But A Matter of Life and Death became a box-office hit.

Rice was shocked by the reviews, when the company had poured so much passion into the production. "But as a female director I don't wake up every morning and feel like a woman. I don't ever want to feel like a victim. I have the most fantastic life that I'm immensely proud of. I'm a feminist but I'm in a privileged position where I just have my own voice. I'm Emma Rice."

Today she pays tribute to Hytner's intervention: "On a personal level I'll always thank him for what he did, for caring about the work we'd created and the environment. Which is, after all, what he's doing at the National - trying to make it a place where they don't have to do stuffy old productions. It must make it frustrating for him to feel there's this rule book somewhere, where if you step over the line you get told off."

The fallout may have been less about gender and more a battle between traditionalists and supporters of modern, site-specific theatre. Kneehigh have a reputation for frenzied inventiveness - performing in marquees, on cliff-tops and in quarries, as well as mounting a version of Cymbeline (with the RSC) which is about to tour Latin America.

Their productions have a subtle political edge. A Matter of Life and Death referenced the invasion of Iraq. In Brief Encounter there is a huge pile of coal on stage (a reminder that Howard's doctor is actually treating men for coal dust inhalation).

In Rice's version, the lovers swing on chandeliers. Laura's children are played by puppets. She incorporates music-hall turns from the snooty café manageress, the humorous station guard, the childlike waitress. But it is never disrespectful. "Our Brief Encounter is not pastiche. I'm very interested in love. I think as you get older your relationship to that emotion - which we only have one word for -becomes deeper and darker."

Rice has a partner but prefers to keep her romantic status private. She does reveal every production has been inspired by her personal life.

"I work like a detective really - and my main clue is myself. What is it I feel? What is it that makes me laugh? All those questions will eventually lead you to a production. And the glory is it will eventually surprise you if you don't control it too hard." Born in Nottingham, Rice trained as a "bad actor" at London's Guildhall and then the Gardzienice Theatre Association in Poland (just after martial law was lifted), which "cracked me open as a performer".

Then she joined Kneehigh - and at 32 they asked her to direct. Her award-winning version of The Red Shoes in 2002 came out of the break-up of her marriage. "I read the Hans Christian Andersen tale and wept. It was about the bargains that we make and how we fight to break out of it."

She gained a reputation for playful feminist readings of texts. Pandora's Box, based on Wedekind's Lulu, had a cabaret with can-canning ghosts, while Nights at the Circus (adapted from Angela Carter) featured a giant feathered trapeze artist.

She now lives full-time in Cornwall where Kneehigh are based. It sounds pretty idyllic. They eat, light fires and make work together like an " irreverent group of gypsies". "It's great to be in an environment where to misbehave is absolutely required."

She describes herself as an explorer. "Don't get me in to direct a Chekhov," she jokes. "The reason I use film is because those are the stories I grew up with: the black-and-white films I watched when I was ill, the naughty, comfy treat when it's raining. Perhaps if I'd had a more academic background, different stories would be returning."

What about the people who think we have too many plays adapted from films in the West End? "I'm sure they're right," she says bluntly. "But I believe everybody has retold stories. Shakespeare was retelling stories. Nobody bothers if a play or a book is made into a film."

Rice loves to combine theatre with "the different cultural language of film" which is much more bawdy: you can eat popcorn, you can sit on the back row, you can go to the loo, she reminds me.

Her next project for Kneehigh will be Don John at the RSC. "I'm obviously fascinated by infidelity, in what it's like to have a leaky sexual valve. So I'm interested in re-telling the great myth of Don Juan for a British man. We're obsessed by the Latin lover but I want to look at what our British sexuality is like. What women want from Don Juan today - and whether he can give it."
Brief Encounter is at Cinema Haymarket (0971 230 1562) until 22 June.

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