A Noël Coward adaptation that is strongest when it leans into its artier side, Still Lives is a striking production in the hugely atmospheric The Old Waiting Room
“Please do not speak of trains”
At a moment when London has just welcomed a certain show kinda about trains in an ultra-modern theatre, it’s refreshing to also be able to visit the other end of the scale. Still Lives is another play, kinda about trains, and takes place in the gorgeous surroundings of The Old Waiting Room at Peckham Rye station. A Grade II listed Victorian building sitting between two working platforms there, it was left derelict for the last 50 years or so, but has now been now restored and reclaimed for the moment as the home of the Making Connections 24 arts festival.
Lost Text/Found Space’s innovation is to present a mash-up of two of Noël Coward’s plays – 1936’s Still Life (best known in its cinematic adaptation of Brief Encounter) and 1952’s Quadrille – wherein playwright Dan Rebellato and director Rebecca McCutcheon trace the lives and loves of those passing through a station waiting room over the course of a year. The trains that pass by either side of The Old Waiting Room may not necessarily be period-specific but they add a priceless immersive aspect which further adds to the weight of history felt in the venue.
It’s an ambitious production too, incorporating live singing and expressive movement into its narrative of consequential choices (not just about whether to have a bun) and missed connections (both train-based and emotional). These interventions add an elegiac grace to the work, the six-strong ensemble all in pastel blue suits and the audience scattered on random chairs, atmospheric art installation vibes feeling like a fresh and effective way in connecting sensory work with setting and story.
With two short plays’ worth of storylines and 90 minutes to play with though, the production does try to have its (rock) cake and eat it. Between the iconic yearning of Laura and Alec’s middle-class, mid-life crises of would-be illicit romance, there’s the banter between Myrtle’s tealady and Albert’s ticket collector repping for the working class and all sorts of wife-swapping (I think) upper-class shenanigans which pull us a little closer to the conventional, not quite as striking in the final analysis.
That said, it is still Coward’s writing here, his gossamer-light touch so erudite and enlightening about human lives, no matter what part of society one hailed from. And that company of six – Grace Haydn, Jade-Marie Joseph, Izabelle Lee, Annabel Marlow, Georgina Peters and Flora Wellesley Wesley – eloquently deliver it, capturing the brittle sense of hope that so often comes with waiting on a train platform, whether for the love of your life to materialise or just the 3.15 to Peckham Rye.
