FRESH from their success with Charles Dickens’ The Chimes, Lighthouse bring their trade-mark style to two tales of chance encounters, at Ammanford Miners’ Theatre.

Mild Oats, a comic chamber-piece,was written in the early 1920s and tells the story of a couple who have come back to a flat late at night for one thing, and find something very different happening.

Risqué for the time, it marked writer Noel Coward out as a great talent, and is hardly ever performed these days.

Still Life was written by Coward as a one-act play in 1936. It tells the story of Alec and Laura – a pleasant, upstanding, middle-aged couple, both happily married, and their doomed love affair.

The story, familiar to generations through the iconic 1945 film adaptation Brief Encounter, tells how the couple meet by chance in a railway station tea room. They then meet a week later, and by arrangement every week subsequently until the end of the play.

Their fraught, tender, sometimes amusing encounters are set against the straightforward goings on of another courting couple – Myrtle and Albert, two railway employees.

Albert’s tomfoolery alongside Myrtle’s airs and graces and their obvious devotion to each provide a lot of the humour of the piece as well as a more nuanced look at the social standards and restrictions of the time.

Alec and Laura talk of their hopes and fears, desires and disappointments. The audience learn of the dramas and sadness of their domestic lives and their furtive off-stage meetings.The play is performed by three actors each playing multiple roles and is underscored by the magnificent Rachmaninov concerto used in the film.

The show, named Brief Encounters, will show at Ammanford Miners’ Theatre on Monday, September 21.

For tickets, ring the box office on 0845 226 3510 or online theatrausirgar.co.uk