Brief Encounter, Theatre Royal, Brighton, Apr 21-25

After earning the Palme d’Or on its release, the Cynthia Johnson and Trevor Howard-starring film has passed into the canon of popular favourites and become the subject of countless parodies and affectionate tributes.

The film’s place in the nation’s heart prompted questions when a new stage adaptation was announced. Why tinker with an iconic film? What new is there to add to Lean’s definitive rendering of the story?

But that was before Kneehigh Theatre’s production of Brief Encounter premiered at The Haymarket Cinema (also the venue for the premiere of the film more than six decades earlier) last year, and the stage adaptation soon chugged its way to broadsheet acclaim.

The production – billed as “not the film!” – is the brainchild of its director, the refreshingly straightforward and un-luvvy-like Emma Rice, a cinephile who made an early decision to embrace the shared cultural memory of Lean’s film in her adaptation.

Rice had won glowing reviews for her adaptations of Powell and Pressburger films The Red Shoes and A Matter Of Life And Death, but few films have made such an indelible mark on the public consciousness as Brief Encounter.

“I think I always knew you can’t take a film like this and pretend it’s not one of the best-loved of all time, so from the very beginning I really wanted to honour the form of cinema, but do justice to theatre as well.”

The result is a wonderfully-executed blend of live action, assisted by some wildly inventive staging, including projections and an evocative soundscape. When Alec bids Laura (Hannah Yelland) goodbye at the station, actor Milo Twomey steps through a latticed projection screen to seamlessly board a pre-filmed train, which powers its way off-stage in black and white.

These filmic touches, which also include a projected British Film Board certificate and end credits, are more than just gimmickry, and push the story along while giving the audience plenty to feast their eyes on.

Rice – who first joined Cornish company Kneehigh as a “bossy” actor before being persuaded she was a natural for the director’s chair – says she was intent on creating the kind of atmosphere that’s redolent of a matinee at the Odeon rather than the more structured ambience of the theatre.

“I wanted that bawdy feel of the cinema, with people eating popcorn and snogging on the back row,” she laughs. “I wanted people to get that feeling, but also be able to watch some beautiful performances in the theatre.

“One of the things I hate about traditional theatre is that you buy your ticket, you know where you’re going to sit, you know you can order your gin and tonic, and you kind of know everything that’s going to happen.

“So with every piece of work I’ve created I try to break down those expectations.”

This approach finds its expression as soon as theatregoers enter the auditorium, where a small band dressed as station porters perform Noel Coward songs on ukeleles, banjos and upright bass as people take their seats. The feel is closer to a music hall than the theatre.

“The space becomes alive and buzzing because of it,” says Rice. “It’s warming the space up – something’s happening, and the audience aren’t just observers, they’re participating. I think it genuinely changes the way an audience watches a piece of work.”

The music, which includes the Rachmaninov which runs through Lean’s film, continues in the play itself, is complemented by a series of music hall style “turns” from the ensemble cast which provide laugh-out-loud relief from the sadness at the heart of the story.

“The music hall element was to make it very theatrical as well as filmic, and everyone’s loved it,” Rice says. “It’s a fairly irresistible story, isn’t it? And with a balance of comedy and tragedy as well as the music hall stuff, it’s a top night out, I reckon. But then maybe I’m biased.”

Much of the humour of the piece finds its source in the tea shop in which the would-be lovers first meet. Its manager Myrtle and station master Albert, along with staff Beryl and Stanley, are supporting characters in the film – but were more three-dimensional in Noel Coward’s original one-act play, Still Life (written a decade before the film on which it was based) which Rice drew on for her own adaptation.

“The film became a bit more of a star vehicle, but Still Life is lovely because there really are three love stories running through it, along with the awkward union of two youngsters at the station.”

These other strands give the ensemble cast plenty of room to play up the humour in the text. One of the highlights of the show is an an elaborate and charming dance/mating ritual between Myrtle and Albert.

Annette McLaughlin, who plays Myrtle, has performed in musicals including Chicago, Anything Goes and High Society, but seasoned theatregoers will notice a mysterious change of shape in the actor.

“Myrtle has a very curvaceous figure, along the same lines as Jessica Rabbit, and so I wear padded cycling shorts to give me extra bottom,” McLaughlin explains with a laugh.

“Whenever I’ve been leaving the theatre to smoke a cigarette outside in the street, the men at a nearby building site have been showing their appreciation. I went out again this morning minus the enhanced backside, and they couldn’t understand what was going on.”

Joseph Alessi plays three very different characters in Brief Encounter: As well as Myrtle’s romancer Albert he plays Laura’s decent, steady husband Fred and Stephen, Alec’s best friend.

He says the relationship between Albert and Myrtle is a “simple love, a love story that works – they are good at love and they represent the optimism in the play”.

“As for Fred, Coward’s genius is not to make Fred a bully or a dullard. I wouldn’t want the audience to look at Laura and Fred together and think, ‘What is Laura doing with a man like Fred?’ I think he’s funny and sensitive and he knows that something has happened to Laura. Would they have lived happily ever after? Certainly the film ends very ambiguously.”

Rice says that the funnier side of these relationships is there in the film, but isn’t as apparent.

“There is a lot of humour in the play, but the film was played at breakneck pace – you’d be amazed how much of the stage show is actually in the film, but they just deliver it so fast.

“I’ve directed it for a modern audience, and had no intention of creating a period piece, but it really is funny simply because Noel Coward’s writing is funny.”

Twomey, who plays Alec, is also an admirer of Coward’s work.

“He can articulate emotions in a way that very few writers can – and even if his plays don’t last, which they have done so far, his brilliant dialogue will survive him. I’m sure that as a gay man Coward poured something of his own frustration into Brief Encounter, a frustration which he felt because he was unable to love freely. I think everyone can relate to that.”

Making his first appearance with Kneehigh, Twomey says the production respects its historic setting. “I get a real sense of England from the play – of Coward’s England where, as he describes, ‘The tarts are everywhere in their high heels and furs’. Brief Encounter depicts the feeling of fragility around at the time and I’m sure that a modern audience, especially at the moment, will appreciate that.”

The historic detail is there in the costume and the music, but Rice has mercifully avoided any Mr Cholmondley-Warner style clipped post-war accents, something she says was quite deliberate.

“I had no intention of creating a pastiche or an impression of the film,” she says. “It’s very important that those central characters are good people who aren’t alien to a modern audience – we have to see ourselves in them.

“There is a class element to the way that people speak that you can’t take out, so we needed to have that basic distinction. We’ve tried to tread a delicate line in between.”

For all of Rice’s attribution of humour to the source material, the immaculate comic timing of the production also raises laughs. At one point, the lovers are rowing on a lake and Alec falls in. One of the ensemble cast throws water in the air as he plunges in to the “water” – one of many simple devices that remind the audience they are in the theatre.

Kneehigh’s work always uses an ensemble cast. This is perhaps unsurprising given the company’s approach, which sees them live and rehearse together on the Cornish coast.

“I’m slightly nervous that it all sounds a bit hippy,” Rice says. “However, we are certainly all like-minded people and, living in such an isolated location, we do become a temporary community. We work together and eat together, and living by the sea gives the work its energy and simplicity, I think.”

Twomey – who chose to give a rendition of Cole Porter’s Night And Day for his audition “turn” – says his first production with the company has taught him an attention to detail he didn’t have before.

“In a Kneehigh show, something is always going on: The stage is full of life and it’s fun, fun, fun. They are a physical theatre company with a strong use of music and yet they are essentially storytellers.”

Kneehigh’s methods – Rice rarely begins work on a production with a script – tends to take the emphasis away from the writer, sometimes to the chagrin of playwrights. “I find that some are very defensive about not being centre-stage,” she says.

Instead, much of Rice’s work has found its inspiration in existing stories, which she sees as “folk tales”, and says she would certainly consider turning her attention to adapting from the silver screen once more.

“I can’t believe it, but I really would,” she says. “There’s always such a fuss about it [Kneehigh has drawn crticism for not looking to new writers’ work], but I grew up watching films. In many ways, they are the stories of my childhood, the stories I want to re-tell, so I’ll keep going in my own way, and keep getting told off!”

• Starts 7.45pm, 2.30pm mats Wed, Thu and Sat. Tickets £15-£39.50. Call 08700 606650.