Theatre Review: A fidgety encounter with Keeley Hawes

Davenport plays what is essentially Trevor Howard’s role in the Lean classic – a married man who gets involved with Hawes’ married woman (the Celia Johnson part). One of the conceits of Michael Longhurst and Ann Lee’s production is there is a cameraman around all the time to film the star-cross’d lovers and their big scenes are projected up on to a screen behind them in real time. It’s a bit of a novelty at first but soon starts to feel contrived and cumbersome with the cameraman cramping the actors’ style.

The two leading roles are extended and updated – Keeley is remodelled as a pioneering Labour politician and Davenport an amoral draft-dodging matinee idol – and the play even has a bit of fun at the expense of Brief Encounter, with Davenport saying he couldn’t take the film entirely seriously as Howard never jumped into bed with Johnson.

Where a lot was left to imagination in the film, it’s all spelt out here. As Keeley’s husband, Tom Goodman-Hill makes it abundantly clear in a well-played bedroom scene that he just doesn’t fancy his wife.

But it’s a fidgety kind of a show with a lot of distractions and endless to-ing and fro-ing from the stage. In addition to the omnipresent cameraman, the directors seem a bit too obsessively houseproud when it comes to the set, forever getting stage hands on to take away extraneous items, such as clothes that have been removed for love scenes etc.

For all that, it’s a joy to see Davenport and Hawes on stage and they play their parts well and achieve a good chemistry. I was just left wondering what it was trying to say, beyond that the world has moved on quite a bit since Brief Encounter, which scarcely comes as a surprise. Anyone who hasn’t seen that old film must have been left even more bewildered.