MINNESOTA PUBLIC RADIO INTERVIEWS BRIEF ENCOUNTER DIRECTOR/ADAPTOR EMMA RICE

RUNAWAY INTERNATIONAL HIT MARKS FINAL U.S. TOUR STOP,
PLAYING LIMITED 7-WEEK RUN AT THE GUTHRIE THEATER IN MINNEAPOLIS

Listen to the interview audio:

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/02/10/briefencounter/

Euan Kerr’s interview with Emma Rice originally aired February 10, 2010 on “All Things Considered”

In this must-see limited engagement direct from sold-out performances in London, San Francisco and New York, England’s acclaimed Kneehigh Theatre transforms Noël Coward’s iconic love story into a jaw-dropping fusion of theater, film and song. This groundbreaking theatrical event – ingeniously crafted with whimsical humor, dreamy romance and stunning multimedia effects – was hailed by critics as “a first-class return to romance” (Daily Telegraph) and “an imaginative feast” (Daily Express). The San Francisco Chronicle raved “Every so often a theater piece comes to town that is so brilliantly conceived and executed, so entertaining on every level, that you want everyone you love or even like just a bit to see it. Brief Encounter is that kind of experience.”

Switching seamlessly between live theater and remade film footage, Brief Encounter takes audiences back to the age of romance and the silver screen. Forbidden passion brews in a 1938 railway station tearoom as a suburban housewife, over a series of stolen afternoons, falls madly in love with a married doctor.

The production careens around varying moods of clipped, clenched passion heaving under the middle-class restraint of the duty-bound Alec and Laura, and the wild music-hall exuberance of the ­slap-and-tickle highjinks of two other clandestine couples among the railway station staff. The lives and loves of the three couples are played out in the train station tearoom as a grand entertainment, using the words (some newly set to original music) and familiar songs of Coward to create a breathtaking, funny and tear-inducing show with live musicians on stage, characters jumping in and out of film screens, and a couple in love floating in mid-air.

Brief Encounter continues through April 3 on the McGuire Proscenium Stage at the Guthrie Theater. Single tickets are priced from $29. Tickets are now on sale through the Guthrie Box Office at 612.377.2224, toll-free 877.44.STAGE and online at www.guthrietheater.org.