Still Life (play) mood without technical creaking or over padding, deserves a better fate, and if, by careful writing, acting and producing I can do a little towards reinstating it in its rightful pride, I shall have achieved one of my more sentimental ambitions." "Still Life" was first produced in London (1936) and later presented in New York (1936–1937) and Canada (1938). It has enjoyed several major revivals and in 1945 was adapted for film under the title "Brief Encounter". Like all the other plays in the cycle, it originally starred Gertrude Lawrence and Coward himself. Six of the plays in "" were
Still Life (play) make arrangements to meet at the flat of a friend of Alec. By December, they are both agonised by guilt and agree that their affair must stop. The following spring, Alec is leaving to work abroad, and Laura comes to see him off but is prevented from giving him the passionate farewell they both yearn for when a talkative friend of hers intrudes into their last moments together, and their final goodbye is cruelly limited to a formal handshake. Meanwhile, Myrtle and Albert, two of the station staff, carry on a boisterous, uncomplicated relationship. Coward himself later said of the