# ADSactly Literature: Benchmark Theater - Still Life

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Hello dear theater lovers,

In our previous instalments in this series, we talked about various big names, such as Eugene O’Neill, Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett and today, I thought we’d step away from the world of absurdist theater and deal with another 20th century play that has stuck with audiences throughout the decades. Fear not, for we will return to the absurdist stage quickly, but today we shall talk about Noel Coward’s ‘Still Life’.

Now, chances are you’ve heard the expression ‘a brief encounter’ and you probably know it is in reference to the movie adaptation of said play, which went by the name ‘Brief Encounter’. There were two versions to that, the original 1945 one starring Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard and the 1974 remake starring Richard Burton and Sophia Loren. And I mean no offense to the first two, but can you honestly say you wouldn’t like to randomly run into either Burton or Loren at the train station? I know I would.

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So, maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe not. If not, let me give you a brief run-down of the events of the play. We follow the story of housewife Laura Jesson over a twelve-month period. Like many housewives of that time (think mid thirties), she takes the train to London once a week to do some shopping and catch a matinee before heading back to her family in the country. And while she’s waiting for the train back on one such occasion, she meets Alec Harvey, a married physician, who takes a piece of grit out of her eye.

Now, she doesn’t think much of this event, except the two meet again and rapidly become friends, sharing with each other various truths about their lives. Naturally, the two fall in love and eventually, Alec arranges for them to go to a friend’s apartment in town, although it is left up to the audience to understand what they will, whereas in the film, we’re clearly told they do not get to consumate their affair.
Torn by guilt, they decide the affair must stop. A year after their initial meeting, Alec has been offered a job far away, he offers to take Laura with him, but she refuses. She comes to see him off at the station, but their last moments together are interrupted by a chatty friend of hers and she’s not able to give him the goodbye he deserves.

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The whole play is very sober, the audience clearly tasting the guilt that engulfs our two main characters. It’s not a happy play, not by far, and despite their morally ambiguous behavior, the characters themselves are good and likable, which in a way makes the whole thing worse.

Interestingly, throughout the play, their complicated and guilty relationship is contrasted by the happy, uncomplicated relationship of two of the station staff, Myrtle and Albert (which is quite played down in the film).

‘Still Life’ was one of ten short plays written by Coward under the collective name of ‘Tonight at 8:30’. The plays in the series deal with various subjects and while most of them are light-hearted comedies, three (Still Life included) are noticeably more grim. Coward’s main idea with this collection was to contrast the monotony of a long play in the same setting. And indeed, as a writer, it’s incredible to witness the complexity of emotions he achieved in a very short play (only 54 pages).

As I said, the audience is really crushed under the almost overwhelming feeling of guilt of the two main characters and we end up feeling just as frustrated as the Alec and Laura themselves must feel at the...sameness of the situation.
Because that’s what the play is about, in my opinion, the monotony of day-to-day life and how impossible it is to escape. Coward highlights the contrast between Laura’s two lives very well – the happiness she shares with Alec, the easy-going nature of their relationship as well as the genuine interest they have in each other, which is so painfully absent from her relationship with her husband.

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It’s a great window into something that has become quite cliché – the overworked, underappreciated housewife. And what fascinates me is that it might sound a tad predictable – bored housewife meets mysterious stranger, falls in love, feels young again blah-blah-blah.

But somehow, Coward manages to escape that, he makes it unpredictable. Or maybe it is predictable, because honestly, how many of these affair end happily? We root for Alec and Laura and we hope they can stay together, because obviously they work well together and they make each other young again. But they don’t stay together, and I feel that’s the most realistic ending we could hope for. Laura can’t leave her two children and her unappreciative husband and in the end, she returns to her life of predictability and unhappiness.

Escape is not possible, seems to be the message of the play. And that’s all that remains between the two of them, a brief encounter, a glimpse into a life they might’ve had, but they don’t.

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And besides, even if the characters had stayed together, how long before their happiness would also turn into monotony? How long before they grew distant from each other and secretly longed for another brief encounter with a mysterious stranger in some train station?

It seems to me that the message of the play is that this sort of thing can only ever work as a brief encounter, if it’s to keep the mystery.

My favorite part about the writing in Still Life is that it makes us – the audience – feel utterly helpless, just like the characters in the play. It makes us understand where they’re coming from so perfectly that at one point, even we feel kinda guilty about Alec and Laura’s affair. It’s fascinating how Coward plays with your head in this play, how he gets under your skin and manages to make you feel hopeless. Like even if you do meet a tall dark stranger (ideally Richard Burton, I know) in a train station, you still won’t escape the unhappiness in your life.

It’s a really sad and depressing play, but it’s amazingly well-written and both the stage productions, as well as the two movie adaptations are highly worth your time. Well, two movie adaptations...in truth, there have been so many spins on this same old story over the past eighty years that it’s impossible to say how many movies and stories have come from Coward’s ‘Still Life
Both movies are available online - [1945 version with Celia Johnson/Trevor Howard](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGQ6xBMLfeQ) and the [1974 version with Sophia Loren/Richard Burton](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNaOiLoAM6g).

## So, have you seen/read ‘Still Life’ or ‘Brief Encounter’? What did you think?

##### Authored by @honeydue
*References [1](https://www.dramaonlinelibrary.com/plays/still-life-coward-iid-15013) [2](https://film.avclub.com/more-than-70-years-later-brief-encounter-remains-inten-1798187494) [3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brief_Encounter#Adaptation_of_Still_Life) [4](https://www.dramaonlinelibrary.com/plays/still-life-coward-iid-15013)*

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