Off-stage in the passing of history

First appeared: Evening Star, Ipswich, April 14, 2004

84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
Colchester Mercury Theatre until Saturday

IT is, on the face of it, an unpromising theme for drama. A struggling New York scriptwriter writes to a London bookshop to order secondhand books. The books are sent, with a brief business letter, and a correspondence begins.

And that's about it. There are occasional letters each way, and a few parcels, over a period of 22 years.

Almost nothing happens, and the two central characters never meet. It all moves, rather repetitively, to a predictable conclusion that is sad rather than tragic.

It would be very tedious entertainment indeed if it wasn't well done. Fortunately, it is brilliantly done, with the adapter James Roose-Evans reviving his original production.

Rula Lenska does a remarkable job of making Helene Hanff likable and interesting - the more so as she never comes face-to-face with any of the other actors.

While she inhabits her New York apartment on one side of the stage, William Gaunt as the bookseller Frank Doel at least has his shop staff to interact with.

He is English reserve to her out-going American-ness. Yet it is she who lives alone, while he has a wife and daughters at home, referred to but never seen.

And while this is presented essentially as Hanff's story, it is Gaunt's performance I found most affecting.

I have not seen the film version, with Anthony Hopkins, but it is a tribute to how perfectly Gaunt fills the role that I can't imagine anyone else being right in it.

He and Lenska both make characters who are essentially stereotypes into real, warm human beings.

Overall, the piece is a paean to post-war England and its odd relationship with America. More than that, it's a paean to the small people who are usually just off-stage in the passing of history. In this view, it's the history that's off-stage.

The play walks a fine line between slight and subtle, emerging triumphant through sheer quality of acting.