By Sandra Carter

So, a choice for these evenings around Valentine’s Day. Fifty Shades of Grey at a cinema near you. Or Brief Encounter On Air at the Theatre Royal Windsor.

Love and romance are the themes in both. But what different concepts of love and romance.

You won’t need me to tell you about the film of the book. You may possibly recall – if you are a film buff, or of a certain age – the original iconic movie on which the new play is based. Brief Encounter, written by Noel Coward, thrilled a war-weary world in the 1940s with Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson falling gently, gently in love when meeting by chance in a railway waiting room.

Two years later the BBC adapted it as a radio play, and the script remained in the BBC vaults until 2009. It comes to life again with this stage version of the radio play.

It’s a clever and effective idea. The set is a radio studio, the actors sitting around and coming forward to the mikes when it’s their turn to speak. No acting, no touching, they hardly glance at each other. Yet the two key characters, Jenny Seagrove as Laura and Martin Shaw as Alec, put so much emotion into their words that the scene comes alive in your own mind, just as good radio drama does.

Jenny Seagrove is outstanding. A middle-aged, middle-class wife and mother with an affable husband of whom she is fond, she never once imagined she could feel such passion and longing for another man.

The storyline moves from home, to steam train, to street, to restaurant and back to the station waiting room, and the cast play varied roles from the nasally challenged station announcer to the flirty teashop lady. Here again, the changing scene is created by clever delivery of the dialogue. The recurring background music of Rachmaninov’s romantic Piano Concerto No 2 highlights the repressed emotion of the couple.

There is little physical action on stage – we must imagine it all – except for at one side. Here the foley artist, or studio manager, has his desk of sound effects tricks. Throughout the play he is busily tinkling teacups, swishing water, closing doors, popping a champagne bottle, blowing the guard’s whistle, and playing records of steam train sounds and background music. There were chuckles from the audience as the sounds of the characters’ actions were created by the little man in the corner.

Back to the love story. In a week when the media sizzled to the news that a million Brits have joined an adultery dating website, this couple’s tentative relationship is a reminder that there’s more than one route to romance. It might be fashionable to jump in bed with strangers, but this woman gets a guilty frisson of longing when the man simply puts his hand on her shoulder.

So does she follow her heart and leave her family for this married man? In a packed Windsor theatre on opening night, you could almost hear a collective sigh as the audience shared the pain of her shall-I/shan’t-I dilemma.

Brief Encounter On Air continues at the Theatre Royal Windsor until February 21. Tickets range from £13 to £35, available online at www.theatreroyalwindsor.co.uk or by calling the box office on 01753 853 888.