Reviews

In 1949 Helene Hanff, an American writer living in Manhattan, began ordering books from a London booksellers based at 84 Charing Cross Road. Knowing only that the company specialized in out-of-print books, she sent a list of second hand books she was unable to acquire cheaply and in good condition in New York. Her enquiries were answered by Frank Doel of Marks & Co., and so began a correspondence and a friendship spanning 20 years and 3000 miles.

84 Charing Cross Road, which was adapted for the stage from the volume of letters of the same name published by Hanff in 1971, is a play of singular charm, and the production currently showing at the Oxford Playhouse does full justice to it. The setting is engaging; the comforting, old-fashioned bookshop where Frank works almost, but not quite, blending into Helene’s small apartment. The dialogue is smart, funny, and emotive.

As their relationship develops, we see the stiffly ‘British’ Frank gradually thaw in the face of Helene’s unconventional and up-front kindness, while Helene herself takes a delight in breaking down his reserve, and also in extending her friendship to the shop’s other employees. Rula Lenska is superb as Helene, and William Gaunt as Frank provides a wonderful calm counterpoint to her brash energy, carrying through a second half that is, dramatically, rather less tight than the first. To be honest, even though the other members of the cast have a great deal less to do, not one of them fails to pull their weight, and Joanne Mitchell is particularly impressive as Maxine Stuart, sending a lyrical description of the bookshop back to Helene in Manhattan.

84 Charing Cross Road is a story of friendship distilled, unencumbered by the tricky minutiae that can suffocate a day-to-day relationship. It is also a story about a friendship between two very different personalities brought together through a shared passion, and a common austerity of existence in Helene’s precarious employment situation and the privations of post-war Britain. It may not be particularly highbrow fare, although full of pleasing references for bookish people, but it’s simply presented and beautifully acted, and left me feeling soothed as well as entertained. I wasn’t the only audience member applauding especially enthusiastically at the end. Definitely recommended.

I think it would be only fair to say that students aren’t really the target audience of 84 Charing Cross Road, a merry little jaunt of a play that recounts the true tale of a New York writer’s blossoming friendship with a London bookshop owner over a twenty year period.
It’s certainly a novelty being the youngest audience member in a Cambridge theatre audience if your theatre-loving Grandma happens to be in town, this is the sort of thing that would go down a treat.
Not a great deal actually happens for the majority of the proceedings boisterous female writer Helene, played by Rula Lenska, starts buying books from stiff-upper-lipped shop owner Frank (William Gaunt) by airmail in the midst of the Second World War.
The rest of the play is mainly made up of the two leads reciting their letters and witty exchanges about their loves of writing, reading, books and bookshops.
As time passes and their friendship develops, we see the staff, fashions and trends change around them whilst the dusty old shop remains the same.
It’s a nice device not entirely innovative, but carried off pretty well even if the format begins to grate after a while (there are points where you really wish something would just, well, happen, and small things like revolving walls begin to get very, very exciting where you know they really shouldn’t).
Meanwhile, a band of cheery extras busy themselves by moving books about a bit. As the letters flow and the years pass, we see Lenska’s character’s dream to finally visit her London chums (and the bookshop she has grown so attached to) fade as she encounters numerous financial problems.
You can’t help but think that buying your books from somewhere local, rather than expensive antique copies from Frank three thousand miles away, might perhaps have helped prevent such predicaments.
Such trivialities aside - in the end it’s an ironic twist of fate that means Helene’s book is published and she is finally able to make her pilgrimage to the now-closed bookshop albeit after her pen-pal has died, leaving the audience a tad sombre but perfectly charmed by the whole jolly affair.
84 Charing Cross Road is an amiable, perfectly inoffensive, pretty well-acted piece of theatre (kudos especially to Lenska for carrying off a decent New York accent through her reams of monologues) but you can’t help but feel that something, somewhere in this production isn’t quite as fulfilling as it should be.

A play written from real life often has an added edge, a poignancy that can touch the soul and this one does just that. It’s the charming story of Helene Hanff, a vivacious American scriptwriter in New York who orders a book from a London antiquarian bookshop, Marks & Co. Over the next 20 years she regularly corresponds with the owner Frank Doel (and on occasion other members of his staff), and there develops a deep mutual affection between them.

During their friendship Helene could never afford to visit London and there can’t be a more moving ending than when, after Frank’s death and due to the success of her book of their letters, this gives her the opportunity to come to see the bookshop at 84 Charing Cross Road.

Rula Lenska as the effervescent Helene and William Gaunt as Frank, the reserved Englishman, did more than justice to this truly extraordinary and beautiful story

For the first fifty-three years of her life Helene Hanf (1917 – 1987) was a relatively ‘run of the mill’ writer of early American TV detective fiction, and reader of film scripts, scraping a living in her own somewhat closed world. In 1970, with the publication of her first book ‘84 Charing Cross Road’ and first its BBC TV production by Mark Shivas, followed by the acclaimed film version with Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins and the award winning stage version directed by James Roose-Evans with Rosemary Leach as Helene, she became a well loved world literary figure.

Writing is a lonely pursuit. Trapped in her small New York apartment she developed a great love of England and of early English and classical literature. She seemed to suffer from a mild form of agoraphobia, so instead of setting about the streets of ‘The Big Apple’, which she describes vividly in a subsequent best seller, to search for the books that fascinated her, she started a correspondence with an antiquarian book seller, Marks and Co. situated at number eighty four Charing Cross Road, London WC2.

The early letters were straight forward orders for books but as they progressed over a period of twenty two years from 1949 until 1971 the exchange between Helene and eventually all the members of the staff of the shop became much more warm and intimate and an extremely strong bond of close friendship, if not love, grew between her and the bookshop manager Frank Doel.

There are two very fascinating aspects that emerge from the dramatising of the work. One, the way Helene reveals aspects of her own endearing personality, not only to us, but almost as much to herself and draws additional strength of character from her own writing. Two, how an exchange of simply written letters travelling back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean was able to establish such a close bond between the widely separated correspondents.

Clearly such an exploration of enduring humanity has made all-embracing and compelling theatre but sadly that was not the case with this production. It was very hard to accept that this inconsequential couple of hours could ever have caused the great acclaim of the original production. The programme tells us that, as with the original, this production was directed by James Roose-Evans but I find it difficult to believe that such a fine director could have been responsible for this pale shadow and that this was a re-staging supervised by some lesser talent.

Rula Lenska was a very diminished Helene Hanf. She may well have painted a clear picture of the physical Helen with her “dark brown gin and cigarette voice” but she failed to reveal the warmth and humanity of the woman that is the essential driving force of the play. My heart went out to her as she was really searching hard and very conscientiously to give us a convincing portrait. In so realistically recreating her voice she just croaked at us so rasped her way through the whole evening. Although I was unimpressed with her performance my respect for her as an actor was greatly increased.

This was not the strong thrusting sophisticated Rula Lenska we are used to seeing. This was a vulnerable conscientious actress applying all the well-developed techniques of her trade to try to give her best interpretation of the role to her audience and to my mind having it slip frustratingly out of her hands. Surely this is the very sort of thing directors are employed to prevent, as well as the fairly unremarkable acting of the rest of the minor players. Helen Grace does deserve a word of praise for a well-drawn and carefully observed performance as Cecily Farr.

It was a very difficult and unusual play to act, the dialogue was the letters, read out by the writers directly to the audience but at the same time the words had to set up an increasingly strengthening bond between the communicating individuals. This was never quite achieved. Again I ask: where was the director?

All was by no means lost, well worth the price of a ticket was the excellent and subtle performance from an actor that must posses one of the warmest stage presence ever, William Gaunt. The way in which the words were presented to us gave the feel of actors auditioning. William Gaunt unequivocally deserved to get the part.

84 Charing Cross Road was the address of Masons, a second-hand booksellers in London - and this play is, simply, the true story of New York writer Helene Hanff’s correspondence with the shop between 1949 and 1968 as she orders books.

Put like that, 84 Charing Cross Rd is nothing much - but really this is a love story, told through love letters.

But we’re not talking of romantic love - rather Helene Hanff and Frank Doel, the bookseller, share a love of books and literature; Hanff has a passion for London and England nurtured through her reading; and the staff of the shop in London develop a love of their mildly eccentric favourite American customer.

Over the years we learn of Hanff’s ups and downs as a writer, and of the comings and goings at 84 Charing Cross Rd.

There is trade across the Atlantic too -at first, Helene sends food parcels to Frank and the others suffering under post-war rationing. In the 60s it’s London sending pop culture and Carnaby fashion to the States…and all the while Helene and Frank continue their letters. They start formally as orders for books, but soon contain news of friends and family - and over the years, the love grows.

It’s a touching story of friendship between people who never meet, but who share so much.

This production is directed by James Roose-Evans, who originally adapted Helene Hanff’s book of the same name, and it is a tribute to him and to all of those involved that we really feel that we come to know the characters on stage.

We care deeply about Helene’s love of London and her desire to visit; we’re touched by the plight of people struggling to cope through post-war deprivation in London, and we so want Helene and Frank to meet.

These are people who we have come to know and love over 20 years, after all.

Essentially the play is a two-hander, with Rula Lenska as Helene Hanff in New York and William Gaunt playing Frank Doel in London.

Rula Lenska is good but could perhaps afford a slight touch more eccentricity, whilst William Gaunt is splendid - bring Frank Doel truly to life and ageing before our very eyes.

All the supporting cast are strong, and there are nice touches with sound and music.

Like the best love stories it’s touching, funny, frustrating, and ultimately sad: but well worth seeing.