Whitworth Centre, Darley Dale, 16/17/18 October
Still Life is a short play written in five scenes. It is one of ten plays that make up Tonight at 8.30, a cycle written to be performed across three evenings. Coward loved this style of play, despite being unfashionable in the 1920s and 30s. He was closely associated with Gertrude Lawrence and wrote the plays as a vehicle for both their careers.
A chance meeting, the subsequent love affair, and eventual parting of a married woman and a physician is told across the timespan of a year, set in the café of a railway station. The sadness of their serious and secretive affair is contrasted with the boisterous, uncomplicated relationship of a of Myrtle and Albert. In the words of Noel Coward: 'To love and be loved is the most important thing in the world but it is often painful’, nowhere more so than in this story.
First produced in London in May 1936, the play was staged in New York in October of that year. You may not know Still Life, but you may have heard of Brief Encounter, the film that was made from this play.
Tickets £15