Because it's inextricably linked to two of my fondest memories of the theatre.
This time last year I had just finished performing 'Joe and Petunia Hold Their Breath', my final show at uni. I cried almost constantly in-between our performances, and that show was everything I could have wished it to be. It was, and may well remain, the strangest most fragmented, fun, risky, bizarre show I've ever had the pleasure to be part of, because if you can't take those risks in the relative safety of an educational environment, when can you? I am a firm believer of education for education's sake and am furious that the rising tuition fees mean so many people are going to be unable to take a few years out of their life to go and learn something JUST BECAUSE THEY LOVE TO LEARN. Only the rich will be able to afford this luxury, and otherwise university will become somewhere only populated to those whom it is necessary to gain a degree to pursue their chosen career.
Sorry to rant there, I digress.
But I have been reminiscing about Joe and Petunia and one of the things I loved about it was its kitschy-crafty homemade aesthetic. I made the majority of the costumes out of recycled materials and have very clear memories of sitting on my living room floor on the day of the royal wedding. I tuned in for 2 minutes to see the dress then remembered I don't give a crap about the royals and turned over to Film Four where they played Brief Encounter and then Amelie. Instead of joining the hype of the rest of the country watching two people I don't know and don't care about getting married I watched two of the most beautiful and unusual love stories ever told, whilst sewing odd socks onto an old slip to make a flapper dress.
A perfect day.
My other brief encounter with Brief Encounter was with Kneehigh's exquisite adaptation of the film for the stage. I actually saw it twice with two different casts, once in London and once on tour to the Lowry, but I'm really just going to talk about the London version. It was truly one of my most memorable theatre experiences ever. A classic story, told well and creatively, within a very special sort of world. The theatre was beautiful, the ushers in authentic era-appropriate costume became the band, in the interval 40's style adverts were screened and cucumber sandwiches offered around. So many little details adding up to create a wholly immersive world.
The truly magic moments for me were the ones where homage was paid to the film, as the show literally moved between the stage and the screen. Laura running out from the audience through a giant screen and appearing in her living room. A screen pulled across stage with a train projected across it as she debates jumping. Just... perfect. Utterly perfect.
I've been lucky enough to see a lot of excellent shows (and god knows how many mediocre ones) but the ones which get marked down in my mental list of 'best things I've ever seen' are rarely there because of artistic merit alone, but because of that special quality belonging entirely to the theatre - ephemerality.
They are shows which I have seen at the exact right time. An excellent production of Peter Pan at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, which would simply have been 'really good' if it weren't for the fact it was the last play I would see as a teenager. 'The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic' last summer as a sort of comic-con for contemporary theatre, showing me just what I wanted to achieve, just as I was leaving Uni to try and make my own mark on the world of theatre!
And Brief Encounter. I saw Brief Encounter after having broken up with the first person I'd ever truly been in love with. And it let me deal with all the emotion that goes with that in a way I hadn't quite found the way to express til then and the tears I shed for Alec and Laura were cathartic and necessary and so a show became something more to me. Something terribly special. (And yes I did just get home from watching the film, continued writing this and am describing things as 'dreadfully this' and 'awfully that'. I do apologise. It's hard to stop...)
I think that is something about the theatre which we can never really get with films. A film we can love, and it can be beautiful and wonderful, and we can watch it over and over again until we can quote it line for line, and that can be a great thing. But a piece of theatre you only ever really see once, as it is subject to so many little variations, and so when the right show comes along at the right time it will be indelibly marked upon your experience on this planet, and that... that is magic.
And all I have to do is hear these opening notes and I am right back in that theatre.
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