Since I discovered an appropriately shabby second-hand copy a few years ago, 84, Charing Cross Road has been one of my favourite books – a booklover’s delight, short enough to gulp down in one sitting, full to bursting with books and food parcels and heart. I was incredibly excited to see the play, but couldn’t imagine how an epistolary novel like this could be interpreted for the stage. I forced myself not to re-read it before I went to see it; after all, what if the play was nothing like the book? I didn’t want it to be too fresh in my mind.
But … then I had a couple of hours to kill before the play, and I ended up pulling my battered copy out and reading it, finishing just in time to dash to the Oxford Playhouse. I was kicking myself; how could the on-stage version measure up to this wonderful little book?
Well, I shouldn’t have been so worried. From the instant I sat down and saw the shelves, filled to the rafters with beautiful old books, I knew I was among friends. The theatre company, Cambridge Arts Theatre Productions, has perfectly recreated a 1950s London bookshop, and a cluttered New York brownstone, and each city comes alive to us, as the characters from the book fill the stage. All of the supporting cast members play musical instruments, easily marking the changes in time (from Jingle Bells at Christmas to Welcoming in the May-Oh) without continuously dating each scene.
While the supporting cast adds light and levity to the play, the stars are Helene Hanff, played by Stefanie Powers and Frank Doel, played by Clive Francis. Hanff is a brusque, kind New Yorker – ‘a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books’ – who prefers to order her books from London than to try to find what she wants in New York. Her correspondent, ‘FPD, for Marks and Co.’, is a reserved English bookseller, quietly amused by the letters he receives from Ms Hanff, and determined to remain utterly professional in all his dealings. The narrative is made up entirely of letters between this unlikely pair, and the friendship which forms over years of correspondence.
The casting is perfect. Powers is a wonderful Hanff, with her throaty laugh over her typewriter, and her explosive ire: ‘This is not Pepys’ diary, this is some busybody editor’s miserable collection of EXCERPTS from Pepys’ diary, may he rot. I could just spit.’ Francis perfectly embodies the buttoned-up Frank Doel, with his staid decorum offset by the hint of a smile as he reads Hanff’s missives. The script is only very slightly adapted from the book text, and so the writing shines through, as the company brings this charming, funny, and emotional tale perfectly to life on the Oxford Playhouse stage. ★★★★★ @BookingAround 19th June 2018
Photo by Richard Hubert Smith
