Still Life (play)

Still Life (play)

Still Life is a short play by Noël Coward, one of ten that make up Tonight at 8:30, a cycle written to be performed across three evenings. The play depicts the love affair of Alec and Laura across a twelve-month period. The sadness of Alec and Laura's serious and secretive affair is contrasted throughout the play with the boisterous, uncomplicated relationship of Myrtle and Albert, two of the station staff.

In the introduction to a published edition of the plays, Coward wrote, "A short play, having a great advantage over a long one in that it can sustain a 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.