Singin’ In The Rain and Brief Encounter coming to the North East
May 9 2009 by David Whetstone, The Journal
Memories of two great films will be stirred on North East stages next week. David Whetstone hopes it means some great theatre
But he confesses that this show has made great demands already. “It should have required an extra-long rehearsal period but we put it on its feet in three-and-a-half weeks, which was no mean feat. It’s taken this first quarter of the run to really settle into it and to begin to enjoy it. You will be getting us at our peak.”
The speed of rehearsal was aided by the fact that the cast are all professional dancers. “We are all of that ilk,” says Flavin. “It was a case of soap opera stars and reality contestants need not apply.” The actor, born in Houston, Texas, left school early and headed to New York with a view to making it on Broadway. He reflects on a succession of flops before he appeared in his first success, the 1979 production of Pirates of Penzance which launched the career of Kevin Kline.
He moved to England in 1984 to star in a show called On Your Toes and stayed on. He is now settled in East Sussex with English wife Stephanie (whom he first set eyes on when she auditioned for a production of Cabaret he was directing) and their seven-year-old daughter Eleanor.
He spent three months in Sunderland some three years ago, playing Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
“I had a wonderful time. The Empire is one of the most wonderful theatres on the tour and I was staying in a flat quite close by. I remember seeing the dome of the theatre change colour depending on the sun. It’s a very vivid memory.”
The film Brief Encounter was a very different kettle of fish – an extremely intimate portrayal of a romance which blossomed at a railway station but never quite flowered, given the social restrictions of a bygone age.
Its theatrical makeover comes courtesy of Emma Rice, founder of the much admired Kneehigh Theatre Company, based in Cornwall but recent regulars at Northern Stage (whose Neil Murray designed this production).
“I never start with a script,” she says. “I drive actors crazy because I work a lot on instinct and the last thing I want to do in rehearsal is to talk for hours about character motivation.” We can take it that the cast of Brief Encounter have not spent hours studying Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard on screen. Unlike Singin’ In The Rain, then, this is not destined to be a recreation of the work of film director David Lean.
“If you boil it down to its most basic level,” she says, “I think that my work is often about love, the wonder of it and the trouble it can get us into. It asks how one negotiates the emotions and what happens when you break the rules.”
Adept at blending live action and screen images, Rice’s Brief Encounter may represent the marriage of the two media at its happiest and most serene. But audiences at the Theatre Royal will be the judge of that.
Singin’ In The Rain is at Sunderland Empire next Tuesday to Saturday. Box office: 0844 847-2499. Brief Encounter is at Newcastle Theatre Royal Tuesday to Saturday. Box office: 08448 112121.
