LONDON -- In an era when old-style movie theaters are being torn down for lucrative property deals, the last thing you'd expect to find is a thriving cinema chain producing a play in its venue. But thanks to a deal between David Pugh and Dafydd Rogers -- producers of "Art," "The Play What I Wrote" and "Equus" -- and Cineworld Group CEO Steve Wiener, that's exactly what's happening.
The producers are partnering on the Kneehigh Theater's stage adaptation of Noel Coward's "Brief Encounter."
Wiener and Cineworld came onboard late in the proceedings. Pugh and Rogers had been pursuing ideas with Kneehigh, the hugely successful Cornwall-based touring theater company most celebrated for recent National Theater collaborations "Tristan and Yseult" and "A Matter of Life and Death."
When director Emma Rice happened to spot the DVD of "Brief Encounter" on Pugh's desk, she remarked that it was her favorite film.
A classic romantic drama, the movie actually began as the one-act stage play, "Still Life," but in 1945 Coward expanded it for the screen, and it became David Lean's "Brief Encounter," among the best-loved British movie ever made.
Pugh and Rogers negotiated rights to the screenplay and original play plus further songs and poems from the Coward estate. The production then played tryouts in regional theaters in Birmingham and Leeds.
That yielded offers for several West End houses, but Pugh and Rogers felt they needed somewhere nontraditional to give the show commercial credibility. Star casting wasn't a viable option, because it would have clashed with Kneehigh's company ethos.
By chance, a few days ahead of the option expiring, Pugh and Rice walked past Cineworld's 1927 art deco triplex on the Haymarket, just up the block from the long-running home of "The Phantom of the Opera." Having persuaded the cleaners to let them in, they hit upon the idea, in showbiz fashion, of staging the play right there.
After an initial meeting, Wiener, who started out as an usher at a movie theater in Miami, watched the DVD and then took a train to Leeds with his wife to see the stage show.
"We had no idea what to expect," he says. "We were blown away: The theater seats almost 800 people and there must have been 700-750 people of all ages at a matinee. They were going wild for it."
He convinced his board of directors not just to take a straight cut, but to get onboard as co-producers.
The result is that one of his London flagship cinemas with three screens has been transformed. The two smaller screens will continue to show movies once the play has opened, but the main house has been turned into a 443-seat theater. This is not as unlikely as it sounds, partly because it was originally built to house both movies and live entertainment, although the latter has not been presented there in more than 40 years.
British regulations require a minimum of 35 feet between the screen and the front row. Together with six feet behind the screen, that allowed for an acting area to be built almost identical to that of the regional theaters where the show had already played, with a stage a good deal wider.
Better yet, unlike many theaters, the sight lines are excellent, with no restricted-view seats, and cinema seating is considerably more comfortable, allowing far more leg-room than in old-fashioned playhouses.
But isn't this a bizarre risk for Cineworld?
"We generate a large amount of income, so in the grand scheme of things, if it didn't work, it wouldn't be a great financial burden on us," Wiener says. "By the same token, if it does work, it's a nice new source of revenue. It's a calculated risk."
So far, it's a risk that looks likely to pay off. When Pugh and Rogers began previews of the equally unknown and unclassifiable "The Play What I Wrote" (which went on to win two Oliviers and a Tony), it opened to an advance of £22,500 ($44,000). At the first preview of "Brief Encounter -- Live on Stage" they had an advance of $246,000. That figure looks stronger still when you consider that tickets run $49-$58, a little more than half the standard West End top price of $98 for a play.
And the U.K. success of the stage spoof of Alfred Hitchcock's "The 39 Steps," now in its second year in the West End, indicates an appetite for legit reworkings of classic Brit pics.
The first cinema chain to be listed on the London Stock Exchange, Cineworld Group has 73 cinemas with 758 screens. But Wiener says he's always looking for ways to diversify and expand. "When times get tough, people want escapism and entertainment. 'Brief Encounter -- Live on Stage' has a strong romantic story and lighthearted entertainment. It's a great conversation piece."
Pugh is typically buoyant. "It could be phenomenal or we could fall on our face," he ventures. "But at least we're not just doing something safe, straight out of the standard repertoire."
Contact David Benedict at
benedictdavid@mac.com