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Brief Encounter to Play New West End Venue
By John Nathan
04 Jan 2008
Equus producers David Pugh and Dafydd Rogers will present a West End production of Brief Encounter, Kneehigh Theatre's stage version of the classic 1945 David Lean movie.
According to the Daily Mail, the show will be staged at The Cinema, a new venue currently occupied by the Cineworld cinema on London's Haymarket in Piccadilly.
Built in 1927, the site was formerly known as the Carlton Theatre and was designed to be used as both a cinema and a playhouse.
From Feb. 2, the building will return to its dual-purpose use when Emma Rice's production of Brief Encounter, which has appeared at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and West Yorkshire Playhouse, begins previews. The show will officially open on Feb. 17.
The West End last saw a version of Brief Encounter in 2000 at the Lyric Theatre starring Jenny Seagrove and Christopher Cazenove, who played the roles made famous by, respectively, Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard in the film.
Kneehigh's version, which stars Naomi Frederick and Tristan Frederick as lovers Laura and Alec, features projected and stage imagery and involves the audience being greeted by the cast who sing songs by Noel Coward, who wrote Still Life, the play on which Lean's film was based.
Brief Encounter has gone down in history as one of the most enduring romantic stories. Alec and Laura fall in love at a railway station, but can never be together because they are each married to others.
The owners of the Cineworld will still have two cinema screens available after the main auditorium has been converted back to stage use. Steve Weiner, who runs Cineworld, is considering accompanying the Brief Encounter with films from the 1940s.
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