84 Charing Cross Road: Review

Although 84 Charing Cross Road is a well-known, well-loved - especially the 1987 film adaptation - and well-adapted text, I went into it completely new, surrounded by an older audience. Before the show began, a woman said to me ‘I don’t know how your generation is going to receive this’. I can answer that: as something entertaining and emotional, but intrinsically untheatrical.

Helene Haff is an intellectually isolated, fiercely clever writer, played with great style by Stefanie Powers, who enters into correspondence with Frank Doel, a stuffy yet warm second-hand bookshop owner. The two characters perform this to the audience. Clive Francis’ performance as Doel was a particular highlight of the play; his change from wholly stuffy to openly affectionate is entirely believable and a strong counterpoint to Powers, whose performance, despite its authenticity and perhaps due to the script, remains almost wholly on the same level the whole way through. Although we believe in the relationship between the two characters, and both actors are able to elicit genuine pathos as the piece progresses, the fact that very little changes in their relationship after the first half-hour - apart from the books they’re discussing and a reference or two to Beatlemania - leaves the audience wanting and dramatically unfulfilled.

This is another problem of this strongly static production. Although the lovingly designed set clearly reflects the contrast between the ‘British reserve’ of Doel and the outgoing New York mindset of Haff, it serves to emphasize that there is no movement within the piece. What there is, seems to have been added in to try and add some texture, such as the use of chorus and musical instruments, but even that only serves to emphasize that this is a deeply undramatic production.

The play concerns just two people, reading letters to one another. This is the main flaw of 84 Charing Cross Road as a piece of theatre: it would make a radio play and lose nothing. It is essentially undramatic, and whilst this remains an enjoyable character piece, as a piece of theatre it often feels that it is going nowhere.

Overall, the piece is a warm and enjoyable way to spend two hours. The play has an entertaining cast of characters, which one feels affection for. Not one performance falls entirely flat - Powers has her fair share of moments - and it is frequently thought provoking, especially on the themes of a sheer passion for books and friendship which the actors convey well. However, the fact that it is so untheatrical, simply because of its epistle form means that for me it never quite jells as a theatrical piece, preventing a true connection with the characters despite the best efforts of the actors.