84 Charing Cross Road, By Helene Hanff, Adapted by James Roose-Evans, Directed by Jo Cooper, Newcastle Theatre Company. Until Saturday, January 22.
Local theatre director Jo Cooper has felt a longstanding affection for the story of Helene Hanff and Frank Doel. In 84 Charing Cross Road, a play that opened on Wednesday night at the Newcastle Theatre Company, after an earlier run in Maitland, that affection is lovingly and meticulously translated by Cooper to the stage.
The tale of Hanff and Doel, two book lovers who write years worth of letters to each another is not exactly famous for its lustiness. You couldn't even call it a slow-burning affair. Hanff and Doel never meet in real life. Whatever affection they feel for each other is only ever hinted at, ever so mildly, through their enthusiasm for highbrow works of literature.
Yet Cooper manages to ensure that none of this matters. Whatever the story itself lacks in adventure and whimsy, Cooper reconciles with blink-and-you'll-miss-it subtlety.
Slipping between the shelves at the London bookshop Marks and Co, on the Charing Cross Road, the store attendants are neatly choreographed into their ever shifting, even eavesdropping positions. Even though there's nothing much happening, there's a kind of comfort in and plausibility to all the monotony. Where it could so easily become tedious it instead crackles along with a whispering, conspiratorial cheekiness.
When Doel (played by Stewart McGowan) mentions that he's forgotten to order a book for Hanff (Aimee Cavanagh), his assistant Humphries (an impressive Jack Madden) slyly reprimands him, with a tiny dip of the brow, just before he vanishes into the silence of the shop. It's a moment with no bearing on the story. But it's one of so many that Cooper directs with care and precision. Slowly these little moments accumulate. Eventually they transform the otherwise dispassionate into the intriguing and warmly charming.
On the other half of the stage, or the other side of the Atlantic, Hanff taps passionately at the typewriter. In her depiction of Hanff, Aimee Cavanagh has to surrender almost entirely to her own solitude. Whilst the bookshop hums with the camaraderie of its assistants (each played smartly by Madden, Robert Comber, Samantha Rogers, Imogen Cooper and a particularly good Bronte Fegan), Cavanagh has to go it alone on her opposite side. Only her friend Maxine (a Streisand-esque looking Ann-Maree Day) offers any respite from her loneliness.
But in a way that complements her thick and twangy "New Yawk" accent, Cavanagh is consistent and unwavering. Whilst McGowan sometimes falters with his lines, Cavanagh delivers the hard-nosed, Big Apple sarcasm of Hanff with a casual assurance. Her convincing performance is punctuated by her understated final scene, in which her vulnerability reveals itself amidst an ironic, quietened unease.
Both John McFadden (set design) and Melinda Hicks (costumes) deserve praise for their obvious and impressive attention to detail. McFadden's poky but handsome bookshop is an excellent representation. On the opposite side, Hanff's unkempt, booklined apartment looks equally cosy and authentic.
Hicks costumes the Mark and Co staff so attentively that even a drabby, store-worn apron somehow appears stylish. As much as Hanff looks perfectly snug and homely, both Doel and his colleague Martin are dressed perfectly as the stuffy and officious-looking London gents.
Her convincing performance is punctuated by her understated final scene, in which her vulnerability reveals itself amidst an ironic, quietened unease.
Michael Byrne on Aimee Cavanagh
