There was a time not really that long ago when the English were stereotyped as emotionally repressed. There was no better or more successful example than the 1945 box office hit, Brief Encounter, adapted by Noel Coward from his one-act Still Life, in which Celia Johnson as suburban housewife Laura Jesson and Trevor Howard as Dr. Alec Harvey meet over tea in a train station café, fall in love during a series of stolen Thursday afternoons, and eventually agree that the only right thing they can do is part forevermore. Now the playfully experimental Kneehigh company proves how much -- and how little -- their countrymen (and women) have changed in an excellent stage adaptation of Brief E[...]